Organizational Environment

Introduction

Organization environment can be defined as the type of environment in which the organization operates in. The organization environment is subdivided into two aspects, that are the general environment and specific task environment. General environment can be said as being the external environment in which the organization operates in while, on the other hand, specific task environment can be defined as the internal environment within which the operations of the organization are carried out. This essay intends to argue on the commonly held view that organizations usually operate within broad environment. The essay will take a deep look on the various specific and general environment variables, their impacts on the business, how to reduce impact of each variable on the organization and finally the need for management of an organization to be proactive.

General Environment

The general environment consists of those variables and elements that exist outside the organization but they have an impact on the organization. The variables in these environments include legal political factors, economic factors, socio-cultural factors and technological factors. Each and every of these variables have some impact on the operation of the organization in many ways. In stability in a country may lead to a negative impact on the profits of the organization, this kind of instability can be attributed as having being caused by legal-political variables. In order to overcome this negative impact as result of instability management needs to plan ahead on measures to be taken incase the unfortunate instability occurs. That why it is important for the management be proactive in nature rather than being active as this will always the organization to avoid adverse impact of various environmental variables (Kroon 1995).

Economic variable can have a positive or negative impact on the profit margins of the organization. For example, during economic recession the profit margin tends to go down as consumption by consumers is reduced by some margin due to their financial inability to consume more. In order to reduce adverse economic problems such as inflation, recession from affecting an organization negatively management should ensure that it comes up with pricing policies that will help the organization to realize profit during all economic times (Dillerup 2006).

Specific Task Environment

This environment consists of elements and variables inside an organization and they have a direct impact on the operations of the organization. The variables in this environment include stakeholders, owners, employees, creditors, government, suppliers and community. These variables impact on the profits, stability, employees – employer relation, corporate image of the organization and sources of finances of the organization both in the short and long run (Jeffs 2008).

It is important to ensure that measures are put in place to manage the named above variables on the organization negatively. Managements should come up with measures of ensuring that creditor on time, avenues of resolving grievances from employees, program of corporate social responsibility such as organizing community cleaning programs, ensuring that employees are fairly compensated for their services among many other measures.

Conclusion

There is a need for management of any given organization to be proactive in nature due to many reasons. A proactive management helps the organization to overcome adverse effects of economic crisis, take advantage of available opportunities within the environment and expand the organizations activities among many other reasons.

In conclusion it is true that organizations usually operate within broad environment as they operate within external and internal environments, which have impacts on their operations.