Importance of Business Environment: It plays an essential role in healthy living and life on planet Earth. Earth is home to different living species, and we all depend on the environment for food, air, water, and other needs. Therefore, every individual needs to save and protect our environment.
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Importance Of Business Environment
The business environment plays significant role in the business’s success. It has both positive and negative impacts on business. Some of the importance of the business environment are as follows –
1. Identification Of Business Opportunities
The scanning of the business environment provides businesses with many opportunities. It gives companies a competitive advantage. If changes are analyzed properly and carefully, they can be the reason for business success.
2. Threats Identification
- Threats refer to the external environment trend and change that will delay a firm’s performance. Environmental awareness can help managers identify threats quickly and serve as an early warning signal.
3. Optimum Utilization Of Resources
The environment is a source of various resources for running a business. To engage in any activity, a business enterprise assembles inputs like finance, machines, raw materials, power and water, labor, etc., from its environment, including financiers, government, and also suppliers.
4. Coping With Rapid Change
To cope efficiently with the rapid changes, managers must understand the environment and take appropriate action at the right time.
5. Meeting Competition
It helps firms analyze the competitor’s strategy and thus formulate plans and strategies accordingly.
6. Assist In Planning and Policy Formulations
As the environment can provide opportunities and hazards to a business, studying and examining it can be the foundation for deciding on a future course of action (planning) or training standards for decision-making (policy).
7. Performance Improvement
An enterprise that continuously monitors their environment and also adopts reasonable business practices are the ones that not only improve its present performance but also continues to succeed in the market for a more extended period.
Importance of Business Environment and its Growth
Just like human being, business enterprises do not exist in isolation. Individually business firm is not an island unto itself; it lives, survives, and also grows within the setting of the element and forces of its environment. The importance of the business environment and it is thoughtful by managers can grow if we consider following facts:
- It enables firm to identify opportunities and get the first-mover advantage:
Opportunities refer to the positive external movements or changes that will help firm to improve its performance. So, the environment provides numerous opportunities for business success. Early identification of opportunities helps an enterprise to be the first to exploit them instead of losing them to competitors.
- It helps the firm to identify threats and early warning signals:
Threats refer to the external environment trends and change hindering a firm’s performance. Besides opportunities, the environment happens to be the source of many pressures. Environmental awareness can help managers identify threats quickly and serve as an early warning signal.
- It helps in tapping valuable resources:
The environment is a source of various resources for running a business. To involve in any activity, a business enterprise brings together input like finance, machines, raw materials, power and water, labor, etc., from its environment, including financiers, government, and contractors.
- It helps in supporting planning and policy formulation:
Since the environment is a source of both opportunities and threats for business enterprises, its understanding, and analysis can be the basis for determining the future course of action (planning) or training guidelines for decision-making (policy).
- It helps in improving performance:
The final motive for understanding the business environment relates to whether or not it makes a difference in the performance of originality. The answer is that it does appear to make a difference.
Features Of Business Environment
A business environment is:
- Dynamic: The constant changing of environment –socially, politically, economically, or technologically – results in the dynamic nature of the business environment. A heavy interrelatedness of factors leading to this ever-changing environment is witness.
- Unpredictable: An air of uncertainty always persists due to its dynamic nature. Precognition is impossible; hence, there is no way to foresee future event that might impact the business environment.
- Complex: The interrelatedness of factors and circumstances forms a rather tangled environment that is often difficult to evaluate. It is hard to keep track of the sources and their impact on the condition and forces that make up the business environment. Hence, measuring a specific force’s relative impact on a business is complex.
- Susceptible: Foreseeing a slight environmental change’s impact on business is challenging. An insignificant change may influence company’s operations largely. Thus, it can impact a business’s entire existence, revenue, and development.
- Relative: The business environment is not the same in all place. It varies from place to place. The political crisis in one nation affects business environment only in that nation, not elsewhere. Hence, the business environment is relative concept.
- Multiple-angled: A social, political, or economic occurrence impacts different businesses differently. A beneficial political move for one company might seem threatening to another. Hence, there exist multiple perceptions in the business environment.
Characteristics Of Business Environment
The business environment is complex, dynamic, and also multidimensional, affecting various business organizations differently. It has several qualities, including:
1. Specific and general force
The business environment includes both specific and general force. Specific forces (such as investor, customers competitors, and suppliers) directly and immediately affect individual enterprises’ day-to-day work. Available details (such as social, political, legal, and technological conditions) impact all business enterprises and thus may affect an individual firm only indirectly.
2. Interdependence
Business environment factors are interrelated. For example, a change in political parties will result in changes to government rules, economic policies, market conditions, technology, etc. As a result, it is critical to examine all of the aspects because they are interconnected thoroughly.
3. Complexity
Because the business environment comprises several interconnected and dynamic circumstances or forces that emerge from various sources, it isn’t easy to understand what defines a specific domain.
4. Uncertainty
The business environment is primarily unclear since it is difficult to foresee future events, mainly when environmental changes occur regularly, as in the case of the information technology or fashion industries.
5. Totality of external forces
The business environment is the total of all things external to a business firm and, also as such, mass.
6. Relativity
The business environment is a relative concept because it varies by country and location. For example, political situations in the United States differ from those in China or Pakistan. Similarly, sare demand may be relatively high in India but almost non-existent in France.
7. Impact
Impact means the effect of the environment on business. So, the business environment has long-term and short-term impacts on business. For example, different firms may get affected due to changes in technology.