THE GENERAL EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT
- Laka Muralidharan
General external environment is composed of dimensions in the broader society that influence an industry and the firms within it. These dimensions can be can be grouped into the following six environmental segments: demographic, economic, political/legal, sociocultural, technological and global segments.
1) Demographic segment
China and India account for 1/3rd of the population and experts believe that they will remain the top two populous countries at least until 2050. China and India would contribute 65 million and 142 million new workers respectively to the global workforce by the year 2020. Both countries offer large, educated, relatively low-cost workforces, and as
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However, since the recovery is just a few months old, there is still a lot of skepticism about whether it is for real and whether it has some legs to run further. I think the worst is behind us, but the future is still uncertain. I believe that it would take quite a while, at least a couple of years to get back to the economic levels (unemployment rate and housing market) of 2006.
3) Political/Legal segment
This segment is an area where organizations compete for attention, resources and a voice in overseeing the body of laws and regulations guiding the interactions among nations. As the politics of regulations change, this segment influences the nature of competition through changing rules. An example is the global trend toward privatization of government-owned or regulated firms. Firms must carefully analyze new political administration’s business-related policies and philosophies. Often, firms develop a political strategy to influence government policies and actions that might affect them.
In the global scenario, more countries continue to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) as they seem to believe that free trade across nations serves the best interest of individual countries and their citizens. Down the line, many years from now, we would see a scenario where all countries in the globe become members of organizations like WTO and there is a fair trade across all countries
Unlike previous years of solely trading goods, the WTO allowed for trade to consist of property and services among different countries. Countries could now be globalized in all goods their country didn’t have through the use of free trade. The process of trading was revolutionized by new developments in technology as more and more countries began to trade.
WTO: World Trade Organization deals with the global trading rules between international governments. The overall rules must be predictable enough so that everyone involved isn’t dealing with chaotic sudden changes.
External and internal environmental analysis is a critical component for an organization seeking to achieve its goals. The follow information within this paper presents a complete external environmental and an internal competitive environmental scan for JetBlue Airways. The information provided identifies and analyzes the most important external environmental factor in the remote, industry, and external operating environments. When addressing external environment it speaks to a set of forces and conditions outside the organization that can influence its performance. The most common forces include political, economic, social,
America has recently fallen into a great recession, and though some claim we are no longer in a recession, our country and has never quite bounced back. Our economy is fragile and unstable. “In June 2009….native born workers lost 1.2 million [jobs] (Herbert 565).” Businesses are afraid to hire more workers; for fear that consumers aren’t comfortable spending money quite yet. Consumers are afraid to spend money for fear that they won’t be earning any more. People who were once financially stable are barely getting by, some even homeless. This recession has been said to be equal to, if not worse than, the Great Depression. “The human suffering in the years required to recover from the recession will continue to be immense (Herbert 565).” Recovery may be happening, but is definitely an unstable process.
The United States economy has been in different stages of the business cycle. From being in depression to recovery to our peak and so on, the economy is always changing. Today, I believe that the U.S. is still in a recovery from 2008. The reasons are from everything that I have researched. We are not in a depression because jobs are easier to get and we have money. We are not in a recession because our economy is improving, not the opposite. Also, we aren’t at a peak because we can still improve the rates of unemployment and everything else in our economy. Our economy is growing everyday and we are always improving.
The General Environment is defined in the textbook as, the economic, technological, sociocultural, and political/legal trends that indirectly affect all organizations. The economic component of a firm’s general environment refers to the growing or shrinking of the economy. Target, as any other retail company is
An analysis of the external environment includes the factors in a business’s external environment about a business's industry, competition, and political and social environments, and affects the firm’s strategy (Aaker, 2001).
External environmental factors are the macro environment affecting a business; they are factors outside the company and which they have no control over (Kotler & Armstrong, n.d.) these external factors bring about impacts to the company thus a company should always be prepared to react.
One of the biggest firms associated with globalization is the World Trade Organization. The World Trade Organization is the only international body that deals with the rules of trading between nations. It has evolved over the past half century into an entity that contract with the trade of services, intellectual property as well as its original intent of the trade of goods. The WTO controls most trade in the world today through over 100 countries, and even more on the way. The World Trade Organization is beneficial economically and we should support its principles.
Pollution has become a heated issue in recent years. The destruction of the environment along with serious health problems are the eventual effects. The extensive use and availability of automobiles, tremendous amounts of production in the booming economy and the constant increase in demand for energy, can be held responsible.
The general environment is composed of segments that are external to the firm. Although the degree of impact varies, these environmental segments affect all industries and firms competing in them. The
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a global organization that helps countries and producers of goods deal fairly and smoothly with conducting their business across international borders. It mainly does this through WTO agreements, which are negotiated and signed by a large majority of the trading nations in the world. The purpose of the WTO is to ensure that global trade commences freely, smoothly and predictably while also aiming to create economic peace and stability in the world through a multilateral system. This is based and applied to member states, currently 162 countries, that have consented and ratified the rules of the WTO in their individual countries. Simply put, these documents act as contracts that provide the legal framework for conducting business among nations, integrating into a country 's domestic legal system, therefore, applying to local companies and nationals in the conduct of business internationally. For instance, if a company were to open an office or business in a foreign country, the rules of the WTO dictates how that can be done.1
Evans and Richardson (2007), contend that globalized economic environment is complex and changes from time to time and this places a heavy responsibility on multinationals and other business enterprises. They are forced to adapt in order to deal with these factors for the benefit of their organizations. A company cannot ignore political issues when assessing the business environment in which it operates because it affects government policies such as licensing, regulation and taxation, which have a direct consequence on the activities of a business enterprise (Evans, & Richardson, 2007).
THE POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT: The critical concern Political environment has a very important impact on every business operation no matter what its size, its area of operation. Whether the company is domestic, national, international, large or small political factors of the country it is located in will have an impact on it. And the most crucial & unavoidable realities of international business are that both host and home governments are integral partners. Reflected in its policies and attitudes toward business are a governments idea of how best to promote the national interest, considering its own resources and political philosophy. A government control's and restricts a company's
External environment refers to external aspects of the surroundings of business enterprise, which have influence on the functioning of business. The external environment can provide both facilitating and inhibiting influences on organizational performance. Key dimension of the external environment principally consists of a micro environment and a macro environment.