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An Analysis of the Major Internal and External Environmental Factors Affecting Actopen in the Context of Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe and an Evaluation of How the Organisation Is Positioning Itself to Deal with the Issues.

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Executive Summary

This report contains an analysis of major internal and external environmental factors affecting Actopen, and especially how the organization is positioning itself to deal with these factors.

Actopen is a wholly owned subsidiary of AXIGEN Corporation, a conglomerate listed on the Zimbabwe stock exchange. Major shareholders of AXIGEN are seated at corporate office, which share the same building as Actopen. This geographical closeness, together with uncertainty in the Zimbabwe environment has prompted continuous and frequent shareholder interest in the short-run activities of the business.

In this brief, an analysis of the external (mega) environment was done using the PECLIST model. The task environment was appraised …show more content…

(Writing Instruments Market Index. June 2005, p. 3)

The organization’s value chain. is also important. Please refer to appendix 1 for a complete value chain for Actopen. Inbound logistics is dominated by plastics raw material which are all imported. Operations are characterized by injection molding of components, ink filling and subsequent manual assembly into finished product. The outbound logistics function is owned for Harare deliveries only. Marketing and sales, as well as product support are conducted in-house. Support activities of the value chain comprise of human resources, research and development, procurement, machinery and buildings. The company employs 150 employees of which 10 are managerial and 140 are non-managerial.

The Environment Defined

The environment of an organization can be defined as “ ….. the pattern of all the external conditions and influences that affect its life and development” (Mintzberg and Quinn (1991), p. 47.) For a holistic approach adopted in this report, it is necessary to add the internal conditions on the definition. The full scope of the environment impacting on an organization has both internal and external conditions always at play to present opportunities and threats to an organization. Thus the environment is classified into three main realms namely: macro/ mega environment, task/ industry environment and internal/ micro environment.

Figure 1: Composition of a business environment.
(Source: Adapted from

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