Impact of an Environmental Factors on the Organisation - Coursework Example

ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS ON MY ORGANIZATION Name: Course Instructor’s name Institution Date IMPACT OF AN ENVIRONMENTAL FACTOR ON MY ORGANISATION AND JOB Every organization operates in an environment and, as a result, there are factors that impact it either positively and negatively. Environmental factors can range from physical, cultural, economic and regulatory that may hinder an organization’s operations. Technological factors have had a major impact in organizations and to a great extent helped influence the environment an organization operates in. Samsung has effectively and efficiently utilized technology as an environmental factor to boost sales and maintain customer base. An environment is important for any business if it has to thrive but most importantly keeping up with the various environmental factors guarantees success and helps avoids any losses business may incur. Being a tech giant Samsung has to keep up with technological factors like inventions and innovations and over the past three years Samsung has been offering products of high innovations e.g. the Samsung Galaxy brand, television sets, and fridges. These technological changes have seen Samsung increase its sales and double its profits. With constant innovations, Samsung has been sued and fined for innovations that they copied from competitors. This is a clear indication of the pressure most environmental factors have on organizations and if not properly done lead to unwanted ethical behaviors. With the invention of fridges that can keep power for almost 24 hours even after an outage helped Samsung boost it sales and revenues more so in developing nations where they are always faced with power shortages. These innovations differentiate Samsung from other tech giants like LG by offering unique and technologically advanced products. Samsung has effectively dealt with the ever-changing needs of consumers through constant innovations. Recently Samsung announced the soon to be released Samsung Galaxy s6 a clear indication of their innovative nature. Organizations like Samsung motivate and offer their employees fields for development and career advancement. Thus, employees that are interested in advancement and development in career advancement tend to work for the best firms like Samsung. Innovation is always coupled up with a strong research and development but most importantly a massive financial power and, for this reason; big co-operations will always lead while others follow. According to New York Times Innovation is a major fete that has propelled big organizations to thrive while others crumpled along the way. Due to the innovation nature of Samsung and other giants like Sony and Apple, firms like Nokia had to be salvaged because of their lack of innovation. A strong technological brand is backed by high caliber employees who are very innovative and hungry for success. Employees are crucial to every other organization and thus by setting standards for an organization and the bar of performance too high helps motivate employees while encouraging them to work hard. Therefore, major leading organizations in any particular field have very highly motivated employees and a huge financial power that helps the organizations identify market trends and aim at satisfying them through constant innovations. Key environmental factors have been attributed to the general success of Samsung Electronics. Samsung as an organization has been able to deal with social, cultural factors, political, economic and in some extent regulatory factors. Consequently, these factors have had a major impact on the success of Samsung according to Forbes and the New York Times. Social, cultural components influence the ability of an organization being able to obtain resource and craft products according to social; cultural needs i.e. customs and values. With social, cultural factors, there is a possibility of an organization being affected negatively and positively, and thus an organization like Samsung has in the past considered the demographics, rising educational levels and the social norms and values. Being able to factor the sociocultural components when manufacturing their products has helped them come up with a variety of product to meet these needs. For example Samsung has decoders specifically meant for Africa, and they also manufacture both feature phones and smart phone to cater for the various classes of their customer base. Population change is another socio-cultural component that has a direct and indirect impact on an organization. Organizations rely on the population to consume their products and thus harnessing the population change factors and the demand for product services has helped Samsung keep up with the demand for their products from customers. Population change brings about more demand and thus more production. Therefore in order to keep up with demand and satisfy their customers Samsung recruits employees every financial year to help serve the population better. Technological factors have over the years affected the general demand for a company’s products and services, and this has been evident as some organizations have lost customers due to their inability to adapt to these changes. For example, Nokia and Motorola have been causalities of technological factors. Technological changes created new opportunities for Samsung, and it shifted from making chips for mobile phones and started manufacturing the phones themselves. With the introduction of Google’s Android, Symbian that was the dominant player in the mobile platform fell behind IOS and consequently to android. With these changes, Samsung was able to capture the market, and currently it’s the leading mobiles phones manufacturer in terms of units due to its ability to effectively adapt to technological changes. Political and legal factors affect organizations in the sense that political players and parties have different manifestos and interests. These interests often have tax promises that may hinder the operation of organizations more so multinationals that operate in several countries. The legal, environmental factors equally help determine what an organization can and cannot do, and this limits an organization's operations and free will. Samsung as an organization has been able to meet most of the international standards need in order to do business overseas. However, some of its mobile phone units were prohibited from being sold in the United States to protect Apple from losing revenues due to Samsung’s copyright infringement. On the other hand, Samsung has been unable to set up a business in some countries due to the hurdles associated with legislation. Economic factors define the direction the economic system within which a business operates. These economic factors range from the balance of payments, distribution of income and the general government's monetary and fiscal policies. Samsung has mitigated most of these economic factors having that most of its products are people sold all over the globe an indication that it has met the requirements. Samsung has over the years used GDPs of countries to price their products as well as paying their employees. This practice helps price products according to the local economic factors, and that is why most of their product prices vary from one nation to another. Taxes, VATs vary among nations and thus the ultimate product price is affected by these factors. Samsung’s response in regard to the above factors is outlined in their strategic plan 2012. Samsung as an organization outline that in order to keep up with the ever-changing customer wants and needs, it has to lay more emphasis on technological and sociocultural factors in order to advance its agenda. Samsung recognizes the magnitude and financial impact the technological factors will have in an organization and, therefore, have identified countries with low labor to help in the manufacturing of their products without necessarily increases prices on their products. On sociocultural factors, Samsung states that it intends to spend money on scholarships every year more so third world countries for education purposes as part of the social responsibility program. Equally they will spend substantive amounts to sponsor bright kids to attend technological institutes as a long term plan to cater for their aging workforce. On political and legal factors, Samsung seeks to work hand in hand with various governments and be actively involved in sharing ideas to avoid cases where governments act on their own in legislation without consultation consequently affecting businesses. On the other hand, Samsung intends to mitigate through economic standards by helping raise standards in the countries of operation by encouraging investment in order to limit cases of poor distribution of income. In nations where the economic situation is poor, Samsung intends to engage the relevant authorities so as to remove levies and taxes on its products. This will reduce the prices of the products and help solve cases of payment disparity. Samsung’s way of handling these factors is rooted to the fact that if they help change the environments that will help them sell and increase profits. This approach is based on manipulation and based on socio-cognitive theory I disagree with Samsung’s approach having that the theory clears argues against the idea that people respond to environmental influences. The theory argues that people only respond to information that they have actively sought and interpreted. This theory states that individuals function as contributors to their own motivation, behavior and development. Some of the approached used by Samsung to deal with these environmental factors are self-centered aimed at only helping the organization make more profit and advance its ideas in the marketplace. Conclusion Environmental factors will always influence the operations of any organizations and to some extent the workforce. Therefore, it’s important for organizations to develop strategies that will help control the environment for the sake of doing business instead of engaging in unethical behaviors to help tilt the impact of these factors in their favor. I think every single organization should conduct a thorough SWOT analysis to help overcome the challenges posed by these factors. Having the right employees for the job will help the organizations deal with factors like technology and sociocultural thus boosting a company’s sales and remaining ethical. Read More