Environmental Domains and Dimensions

Environment can be defined as all factors surface an organization's boundaries that work on the activities of the organization. Environmental factors consist of information, capital, material, people, and other organizations. For example, consider a fast-food hamburger bistro near a college campus. An environmental factor would be the supplier from whom the bistro buys its ground beef. Statistics on college enrollment would be a factor. Data about patterns of hamburger consumption among college students would be another factor.

Often new factors are introduced into the environment that are important to managers. The campus bookstore may open a bistro serving hamburgers which is in direct competition with the fast-food restaurant. Discontentment with the college food assistance may bring more students into the bistro more often. The choosing of a new president in Argentina may result in a turn in beef export course that affects the price of ground beef in the United States. Managers need to know not only what factors work on their firm, but what result these factors may have.

Bookstore

A manager's insight of environmental factors is helped by studying to identify environmental domains which consist of groups of factors. We can conceptualize and analyze six environmental domains that work on the activities of an organization: economic, political, social, technological, competitive, and bodily domains. Some organizations may have factors in each of these domains. Other organizations may have factors in only one domain. However, managers should be knowledgeable about each domain. Changes in the environment may transform domains once thought to be negligible into domains that heavily work on the firm.

Environmental Domains and Dimensions