Characteristics of the external environment. Organizational environmental factors

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Anyone who is involved in business or is about to start one often thinks that the main thing is to write a good business plan and organize the company's activities, and good results can be achieved. But it's not. The success of an organization is influenced not only by the coherence of internal structural elements, but also by the surrounding reality, which tends to change constantly. To analyze the characteristics of the external environment, to predict the risks for the enterprise and use the changes to your advantage is one of the tasks of the managerial link. Skillfully monitoring factors outside the organization and coordinating actions in accordance with their condition is the key to the success of the company.

The development and activities of the enterprise are influenced by a variety of indicators, such as inflation, consumer demand, exchange rates, cultural characteristics of the country, customs tariffs,activities of foreign competitors and much more. The characteristics of the external environment should always be considered in strategic planning.

Organization structure

Any company is a symbiosis of interrelated elements that make up the internal environment. This includes employees, technologies used in production, the structure of the enterprise, its development goals, corporate culture, production techniques, and more. But the most important factor is the staff, as the success of an enterprise largely depends on their qualifications, motivation, attitude to work and focus on results.

Constituent companies

In the internal environment, as a rule, several subsystems can be distinguished:

• social (this includes workers at various levels);
• organizational (this is the labor regime, the distribution of powers and duties between employees);
• informational (covers all information about the company);
• production and technical (includes the main means of production, such as technical equipment, raw materials, etc.).

The formation of the constituent elements of an enterprise is influenced by its goals and objectives, as well as financial and material capabilities.

Relationship with the surrounding reality

Every company exists in certain conditions of the modern world, and they affect it in one way or another. The external environment itself is a set of factors that directly or indirectly affect the work of the organization. Fordifferent companies, it is individual, because in the presence of common elements it has indicators inherent only to it.

Elements of influence on the enterprise

The environmental factors of an organization are:

• customers (buyers) - they control the demand and price of goods and services;
• partners (suppliers of goods);
• competitors;
• the state and its structural divisions;
• culture and morality;
• economy;
• politics;
• foreign relations.

In this structure of the external environment, first of all, it is necessary to highlight the indicators that most actively affect the work of the organization.

The external and internal environment of the enterprise are closely related. The efficiency of the company's structural divisions largely depends on various indicators of the surrounding world, which often change, so strategic planning should be carried out taking into account their current state and expected changes.

Indicators of direct impact

All elements of reality that are important for an enterprise can be divided into two groups: factors of direct impact and indirect (respectively, the micro- and macroenvironment of the organization).

The first group includes:

• suppliers (subjects that provide the resources necessary for the company's activities);
• consumers (they form the demand for goods or services of this organization);
• competitors (provide a similaroffer to consumers in the market);
• intermediaries (provide the movement of goods from the company to customers, credit support for transactions, own sales, promotion of sales by the organization);
• contact audiences (human resources, regulatory agencies, media, the public, audit and consulting companies).

At the same time, there is an interconnectedness of environmental factors, so they also influence each other.

Indirect factors

The second group consists of elements that do not have a direct impact on the management of the organization, but their condition significantly affects the company's activities. These are factors that testify to the current state of the economy as a whole, namely: the state of the country's economy, political changes, international relations, group interests, the development of scientific and technological progress and social culture.

It should be understood that all of the above indicators are interconnected, and the decisions made by the company directly depend on the connection of a particular element of the external environment with a segment in the structure of the organization. For example, the economy directly affects the cost, profitability and profit, natural factors affect the suppliers of raw materials and the need to find new suppliers in the event of depletion of the former, the demographic situation affects the sales market and consumer demand, etc. Therefore, the analysis of the factors of the external environment of the organization should be carried out not separately, but in a system and taking into account whatchanges will entail a change in at least one element and how this will affect the activities of the enterprise as a whole.

Ways to improve efficiency

In order to qualitatively calculate the state of the above characteristics, you need to have a group of employees (or an appropriate department) who will study the external and internal environment, analyze the organization's activities over a long period, consider publications in specialized sources, conduct discussions within the company, participate in thematic conferences, etc.

It is very successful when the management defines a set of only those objects of the external environment that most influence the success of the company, develops and offers ways to quickly respond to them. This allows you to qualitatively regulate the impact of many elements on the performance of the organization, as well as prevent the emergence of risks for it.

Properties of influencing elements

When analyzing the indicators of reality, it is necessary to take into account the characteristics of the external environment. Let's highlight the main ones.

• Interrelation of factors. Their study should be carried out systematically, since a change in some components almost always entails a change in others.
• Complexity: Some organizations are affected by all elements, while others are affected by only a few. In a more difficult situation will be enterprises that use a lot of rapidly developing technologies, because they risk being exposed to economic threats.security.
• Mobility is the speed at which environmental factors develop. The pace of change is simply rapid. And it is this indicator that creates instability for the development of the company. Before deciding on innovations (development of a type of product, change in technologies used, increase in sales volumes, etc.), it is necessary to take into account this particular parameter, since if it is ignored, there is a threat to the efficiency of the enterprise.
• Uncertainty is the amount of information in the company on the state of the above factors and its reliability. The lack of information or its distortion does not make it possible to objectively assess the conditions in which the company operates and their impact on the organization.

When there is a high level of uncertainty, there are two ways to solve the problem.

1) Adaptation of the enterprise to changes in the external environment, that is, the creation of a flexible internal structure that will allow for constant monitoring of the state of factors and instantly respond to its changes by making important decisions and redistributing functions and tasks among employees.

2) Directly influence the performance of the world through advertising, competition, public relations and participation in the political life of the country.

That is, we can say that the external environment is those factors that are outside the organization, but with which it interacts and which are, in a way, conditions for its activities.

The meaning of reality analysis

The value of environmental monitoringfor an organization depends on the type of economy and market model. So, in a command economy, everything was decided by the state, so the influence of external factors was minimal and did not require study by enterprises. In the modern market economy, companies are self-functioning units that develop according to strategic planning at their own peril and risk. Therefore, the value of reality indicators has increased significantly, and the result of the organization's activities now directly depends on the characteristics of the external environment.

The reality around us is quite changeable. And all changes must be taken into account for the effective operation of the enterprise. A correct assessment of the situation in the surrounding world makes it possible to predict threats to economic security, correctly plan further steps in the development of the organization, increase the positive impact of factors and reduce the negative. In today's rapidly developing world, only a company that will successfully rebuild and adapt to the conditions of the external environment will be able to succeed and maintain it.