700 word paper for smartwriter due 6/29 $10

Riordan Virtual Organization and Environmental Scan Paper

Use the Riordan Virtual Organization and research from last week’s Environmental Scan Paper for this assignment.

· Decide which competitive advantages Riordan has in common with the companies researched last week, and estimate which competitive strategies Riordan could use to improve innovation and sustainability of business operations both in the United States and in the global market.

· Explain why you chose these competitive strategies and estimate how they might affect sustainability of long-term organizational performance.

· Explain how the global market would affect the business strategy of Riordan.

Summarize your findings in a 700- to 1,050-word paper.

Format your paper consistent with APA guidelines. https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/secure/aapd/CIST/VOP/Business/Riordan/Finance/Overview.asp

Environmental Scan Paper you wrote for me (

According to Albright (2004), environmental scan is the process through which business reviews factors that may affect its operations and hence thereby affecting its performance. Environmental scanning helps the management to get meaningful information as concerns some factors that may affect the performance of the business at a future date (Choo, 2001). Thus, environmental scanning helps the management to come up with suitable strategies to counteract the occurrence of come undesirable events that may affect the organizational performance adversely. It is worth noting that environmental scanning involves considering factors with the business that may adversely affect its operations as well as external factors that may affect the operations and hence the performance of a business.

According to North (2007), internal factors that may affect the performance of a business adversely are known as internal environmental factors and they include such factors as the organization culture, employees and the business management. On the other hand, factors outside the business that may affect the performance of a business are known external environmental factors and they include such factors as ‘political factors, economical factors, socio-cultural factors and technological factors’ among others. “Environmental scanning is essential to a business because it enlightens management to undertake precautionary measures against any possible future occurrences that may affect the performance of a business adversely.” (Kumar, Subramanian & Strandholm, 2001) Through this, the business is able to maintain positive financial performance and hence this ascertains it of its going concern. According to Hambrick (2002), environmental scanning enables businesses to undertake strategies to improve its profitability. This research will conduct environmental scan for Amazon Corporation and Apple Corporation. It will focus on each of the named companies, analyzing how each company uses its business strategies to improve and sustain its competitive advantage over its competitors.

Environmental scan for the Amazon.com Corporation

This company deals with online selling of goods. According to information retrieved from its website, this company a culture that is supported by each stakeholder of the company. This gives the company a unique identity. Having an identity means that the company has a strong brand that gives it a competitive advantage. Employees are prone to motivated to part of the identity of a company (Beal, 2000). Thus, the identity of the Amazon Corporation has rendered it motivated employees, as they are proud of being associated with the company’s identity. Motivated employees optimize their efforts for the sake of the company’s success and as well, they remain loyal to the organization. This ensures that there is a high productivity level and hence this gives Amazon Corporation over its competitors. It is worth noting that the Amazon Corporation uses its culture as business strategy to gain a competitive advantage. This evident by its vision which encourages customers to find all that they might want to buy online. This gives it uniqueness and hence the company’s services are positioned in the minds of potential buyers. This gives Amazon Company a competitive advantage as it has succeeded in ensuring that its uniqueness has been placed in the minds of the potential customers. The company has reasonable prices for its services and this gives it a competitive advantage over its competitors who provide their services at relatively high prices as compared to the Amazon Corporation.

It can be noted that the external environmental factors favor the success of the Amazon Company. For instance, the company is not affected by political factors as its services are not physical but rather they are done online. It is an advantage for the company since the world is changing to digital world and it does business related to online services. Amazon Corporation uses its relatively lower business as its business strategy to gain a competitive advantage. It measures the effectiveness of this strategy by observing the change in volume of sales with change in its pricing. This mode of measuring the effectiveness of its strategy is effective because the company can easily do correlation analysis between sales volume and the price at which it offers its products or services.

Environmental scan for Apple Corporation

Apple Company is a producer and distributor of electronic devices such as I-pads. The company internal environment is characterized by its culture. Its name and brand support the culture of the apple company thereby giving it competitive advantage over its main competitors. It is argued that the symbol and the company name give it customers’ goodwill since its known for producing quality products. The company acquires competitive advantage through external environmental factors the main being the economic factors. Apple Company produces high quality goods and hence they are sold at high prices. Thus, most of its products are viewed as Giffen goods and hence its products has high demand by the high class people in the economy as they like being associated with Giffen goods for purposes of maintaining their social class. It can also be noted that Apple Company is technologically advanced a factor that further gives it a competitive advantage. Apple Company produces its products in phases in that it releases a single product and allows it to sell in the market for a while as its business strategy. This helps the company to avoid any possibility of cannibalism of its products. The company measures the effectiveness of these strategies by measuring the volume of sales for successive products that it releases. This measurement guideline is effective for the company as it uses the volume of sales of particular products to know what features they would include or even exclude in their successive products.

Conclusion

The success of a business organization highly depends on the environment within which it operates (Garg, Walters & Priem, 2003). This is attributable to the fact that business environment whether internal or external affects the overall performance of the business. Thus, it is prudent for any business organization to consider its environment when planning and executing its business strategies to achieve competitive advantage over its competitors. It is also worth noting the effectiveness of the business strategy used by a business organization determines its success. Thus, the management of any business is obliged to undertake business strategies that will have positive impact on the success of the respective business organization.