Week 2 Discussion

Organizational Environment

An organization’s environment is unlimited as anything outside of the organization is considered its environment. Not every external aspect of an organization’s environment needs to be managed. However, there are key environments that must be identi�ed, monitored, and managed if they can impact the organization in any way. Organizations need to understand the level of severity and importance these impacts could have on their products, services, and customers—the marketplace in general.

Consider the international sector, which can directly and indirectly impact almost every organization. Many industries depend upon raw materials as inputs for products created. An example is lithium. Lithium is primarily found in South America. The medical and technology industries depend upon lithium and can be impacted by international regulation, economic changes, policy changes, and changes in the political environment.

The task and the general environments can and do change and present both opportunities and threats. These environments can have direct and indirect impacts. Organizations need to develop a proactive strategy for managing these environments in which they operate.

Forces in the Organizational Environment

External Environment

An organizations external environment can be broken down into various sectors that includes human resources, �nancial resources, raw materials, economy, governments, international, and technology. We can further categorize the external environment as task and general. The task environment includes sectors that the organization interacts with directly (and can have a direct impact upon the organization) includes the industry, international, market, raw materials, and human resources. The general environment includes sectors that can impact an organization indirectly, such as the government, economy, technology, �nancial, etc. In time, the sectors in the general environment will eventually impact most organizations.

Additional Materials

From your course textbook Organization Theory and Design, read the following chapter:

The External Environment