The purpose of this assignment is to analyze how businesses interact with their internal and external environments. Students will also apply their knowledge of decision-making models, technology and innovation challenges, management theories, …
How businesses interact with their internal and external environments
The purpose of this assignment is to analyze how businesses interact with their internal and external environments. Students will also apply their knowledge of decision-making models, technology and innovation challenges, management theories, and goal setting.
Write a paper (1,600-1,800 words) in which you address the following based on the information provided in the “West Chester Private School Case Study” resource.
Review how organizations interact with their external environment (as open systems). Evaluate the effectiveness West Chester Private School (WCPS) as an open system at the time of the closure.
Review the readings provided for this topic on the internal environment of organizations. Evaluate the organizational culture at the time the decision to close two campuses was made.
Evaluate the decision made by Dr. Murphy and Educations Management Services (EMS) in terms of the process of going about the closure. Explain how the behavioral decision-making model was applied in the WCPS’s decision to shut down its campuses.
Analyze one major technology and innovation challenge that WCPS faced and propose a solution that would make WCPS more competitive in meeting the needs of the three primary stakeholders affected.
Provide an explanation, using appropriate management theories, for how the administration could have handled the closure effectively with stakeholders. Include one theory from each of the following: the classical approach, the human relations approach, and the modern management approach.
Provide a suggestion of two goals: one long-term and one short-term goal for the future direction of WCPS. Include a justified rationale of the suggestions.
Concluding statement: Integrate the four functions of management as a means to revamp management at WCPS and meet the recommended goals.
You are required to use at least two external scholarly sources
- Define the external environment of organizations.
To succeed and thrive, organizations must adapt, exploit, and fit with the forces in their external environments. Organizations are groups of people deliberately formed together to serve a purpose through structured and coordinated goals and plans. As such, organizations operate in different external environments and are organized and structured internally to meet both external and internal demands and opportunities.
Different types of organizations include not-for-profit, for-profit, public, private, government, voluntary, family owned and operated, and publicly traded on stock exchanges. Organizations are commonly referred to as companies, firms, corporations, institutions, agencies, associations, groups, consortiums, and conglomerates.
While the type, size, scope, location, purpose, and mission of an organization all help determine the external environment in which it operates, it still must meet the requirements and contingencies of that environment to survive and prosper. This chapter is primarily concerned with how organizations fit with their external environments and how organizations are structured to meet challenges and opportunities of these environments.
Major takeaways for readers of this chapter include the following:
1) Be able to identify elements in any organization’s external—and internal—environment that may interest or affect you as an employee, shareholder, family member, or observer.
2) Gain insights into how to develop strategies and tactics that would help you (and your organization) navigate ways to cope with or try to dominate or appeal to elements (e.g., market segments, stakeholders, political/social/economic/technological issues) in the environment.
The big picture of an organization’s external environment, also referred to as the general environment, is an inclusive concept that involves all outside factors and influences that impact the operation of a business that an organization must respond or react to in order to maintain its flow of operations.
Exhibit 4.2 illustrates types of general macro environments and forces that are interrelated and affect organizations: sociocultural, technological, economic, government and political, natural disasters, and human-induced problems that affect industries and organizations. For example, economic environmental forces generally include such elements in the economy as exchange rates and wages, employment statistics, and related factors such as inflation, recessions, and other shocks—negative and positive.
Hiring and unemployment, employee benefits, factors affecting organizational operating costs, revenues, and profits are affected by global, national, regional, and local economies.
Other factors discussed here that interact with economic forces include politics and governmental policies, international wars, natural disasters, technological inventions, and sociocultural forces. It is important to keep these dimensions in mind when studying organizations since many if not most or all changes that affect organizations originate from one or more of these sources—many of which are interrelated.
Globalization is a combination of external forces shaping environments of organizations. Defined as the development of an integrated global economy and characterized by free trade, capital flows, communications, and cheaper foreign labor markets, the processes of globalization underlie the forces in the general international economic environment.
This dimension continues to present opportunities and pressures to companies operating locally as well as globally. Globalization continues to affect industries and companies in ways that benefit some and not others. Amazon, for example, is thriving. The firm sells low-end products through its brand AmazonBasics.
The company has individual retail websites for the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, India, and Mexico. Uber and Airbnb represent some of the larger sharing-economy companies that operate internationally and have to date prospered in the so-called new but fragmenting global economy.
In general, countries that have gained from globalization include Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, and China. China’s markets and growing economic prowess have particularly been noticed.
China’s GDP (gross domestic product) is estimated at $13.2 trillion in 2018, outpacing the $12.8 trillion combined total of the 19 countries that use the euro.
Corporations worldwide, large and small, online and land-based, strive to gain access to sell in China’s vast markets. Moreover, China at the beginning of 2018 owns $1.168 trillion of the United States’ debt.
Japan, in second place, owes $1.07 trillion of this debt. Any instability politically and economically with China could result in increasing inflation and interest rates in the U.S. economy that could, in turn, negatively affect U.S. businesses.
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