External Forces That Shape Business Activities
Businesses do not operate in a vacuum, and they are influenced by forces beyond their control. How they respond—and how quickly they respond—to these external forces can make the difference between success and failure, especially in today’s fast-paced business climate. We can organize the external forces that affect business into the following six categories:
- Economic environment
- Legal environment
- Competitive environment
- Technological environment
- Social environment
- Global environment
Businesses operate in all of these environments simultaneously, and factors in one environment can affect or complicate factors in another.
Economic Environment
The economic environment of business has changed dramatically in recent years. After decades of growth and dominance, the U.S. economy is now challenged by the developing economies of other nations, which are jockeying to be number one. Since the financial crisis in 2008, the U.S. economy and businesses have struggled to recover from the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Long-established companies have closed their doors, costing workers their jobs, retirement savings, and even their homes. Thus far the U.S. economy has proven resilient, and since the Great Recession in 2008, progress has been made to stabilize the housing industry, maintain low and affordable interest rates, and provide additional incentives for businesses to open and/or expand. These economic events have all had a direct impact on businesses, regardless of size.
Legal Environment
The legal environment of business is by far the most complex and potentially dangerous external factor a business faces. There is a minefield of regulations, laws, and liabilities that companies must cope with in order to stay in business—just turn on the TV or listen to the news to verify this fact. Volkswagen teeters on the brink of ruin because it falsified data about its cars’ emissions. Tide is airing commercials not to promote the marvels of its laundry detergent but to warn parents to keep the Tide pods away from children, who may be tempted to eat them. These days it takes five minutes and a sharp instrument to open a bottle of Tylenol—the result of Johnson & Johnson’s move in 1982 to make the product more difficult to open after a tampering incident in 1982 caused a spate of deaths and illness. Legal developments in our culture at large—for instance, the legalization of marijuana and same-sex marriage or the strengthening of privacy laws—can and do have an enormous impact on the way companies do business, on everything from what companies sell to how their products are manufactured, labeled, and marketed.
Competitive Environment
How do businesses stay competitive and still maintain a level of profitability that allows them to be successful? The competitive environment has intensified with the development of new technologies, the opening up of foreign markets, and the