Business form a Global Point of View - Essay Example

Name: Course: Tutor: Date: A global business helps in the understanding of various ways and strategies under which a business operates. This is through understanding various business concepts such as sustainability, which drives a business to a long-term growth. Other concepts include the creation of happiness with relation to business, business ethics and social responsibility and technology in business. These concepts act as drivers of a business in a global context and help in keeping the business competitive in the global context. Based on this, the aim of this paper is to discuss various reflections that result from the global business module. Key issues and debates in social responsibility There exists a heated debate the engagement of a business on a social responsibility. Through this learning this module, experience has been gained on how to look at the issue from the advantage side and the disadvantage sides. One of the shortcomings of social responsibility is that it discourages competition among businesses and makes businesses to start acting like partners. This thus thwarts the profitability of the organizations. From the advantage side, it is clear that engagement in corporate social responsibility helps in marketing a business and in the building of a corporate social image. This means that corporate social responsibility is important and what businesses need to do is to develop strategies that would make them engage in it while maintaining their competitive power at the same time. An analysis of corporate social responsibility debates shows that it is advantageous to a business through human resource, the management of risks and differentiation of the brand of the business (Mascull & Kerridge, 2007). The other argument is whether social responsibility is beneficial or costly to the business. Some business advocates argue that social responsibility is only considered beneficial because no one has ever established the cost implications to a business. Others argue that portfolios with high sustainability perform better than those with low sustainability but there is no significant extent that supports this argument. Other economists say that it is very positive to a business. They argue that firms improve their values using corporate responsibilities under imperfect competition (Mascull & Kerridge, 2007). The other debate is on whether corporate social responsibility contradicts the roles of business directors. Others argue that giving too much weight on corporate responsibility in some way interferes with the normal functioning of directors. This means that they have to embrace the social requirements when formulating strategies and this may not be effective when it comes to competition. Others argue that corporate responsibility helps in strengthening the business and therefore it does not threaten the functions of the management team (Mascull & Kerridge, 2007). The other argument based on the corporate social responsibility is based on how effective it is. People argue that it can only be effective when interests of both the stakeholders and shareowners are taken into account. This means that the strategies based on corporate responsibility need to be beneficial to the stakeholders of a business. Based on this, people argue that the community is a stakeholder on its own and businesses should develop strategies that incorporate the interests of both the surrounding community and the shareowners. It has been realized that corporate responsibility shapes the technology systems to be used in the company (Mascull & Kerridge, 2007). This is because the business must always align itself to the technological requirements of the surrounding society. Business environments Throughout this module, it is clear at the end of it that business environment can be classified into two major categories. These are the internal and the external environment. Internal environment mainly consists of the activities within the business and they consist of business owners, the management and subordinates. This also comprise of the organization culture and the infrastructure within it. The external environment on the other hand is composed of the task environment which is further divided into customers, competitors, producers of substitute products, and the potential business enters. The external environment is also divided into the general environment that consists of political, cultural, social, and economical environments. This environments derive forces that determine the scope of business operations. Other external business environments include the natural, global and technological environments (Harrison, 2013). An analysis of these environments show that a business can control its internal environment through the formulation of strategies and adoption of some policies that guide the conducts of key players in the internal environment. External environment on the other hand is hard to control and they are composed of the forces that shape the business in terms of the technological methods to embrace, the activities to engage in, as guided by the legal requirements and the creation of policies that protect it from political interventions (Harrison, 2013). Government, which houses the various external factor can act as a customer to the business and can in turn loosen some tight strategies that have been formulated against the business in order to make the business grow. Political forces can be stringent on the conduct of businesses and this may limit the conduct of business. Thus, when the government comes into play as a customer, the stringent strategies may be eliminated (Harrison, 2013).  How different business functions respond to changes in the business environment The main way that organizations use to respond to the changes in the business environment is strategic management. This helps in the creation of a favorable future that sustains the success of the organization. This is through the involvement of stakeholders in the making of various future plans based on how the organization would adopt to the various unforeseeable occurrences and the important actions that can mitigate risks in future (Mills, 2007). The main emphasis of strategic management is the continuous improvement of the organization and ensuring that it adapts to the changing environment in an effective way. It comes after analyzing both the external and the internal environment. Internal environmental analysis is through studying the contents of the environment and analyzing its shortcomings and the formulation of various strategies of mitigating it. Based on the external environment, it incorporates the needs of the stakeholders and formulation of various ways of embracing total quality management (Mills, 2007). Organizations that use strategic management become more experienced and they develop strategies that reflect the culture of the organization. There are various questions that need to be answered with strategic management and those organizations that answer these questions effectively create valuable business strategies that align the business functions to the various changes in the business environment (Mills, 2007). The strategic management in this case is built focusing on the various functions of the organization to ensure that each function is effectively aligned to a change and that these changes do not negatively affect the normal operations of the organization. The range of statistical and non-statistical tools and techniques to analyze business data and information are very important because they help in solving problems from diversified contexts in an effective way thereby ensuring that business operations are not thwarted by effects that come from the broad contexts. In addition, the statistical techniques substantiate various organizational decisions eliminating the element of making decisions just for the sake of solving a problem that an organization is experiencing. Business managers need to design quality in their products and they should always focus on improving the products at all the production stages to keep them competitive enough. In this case, statistics help in measuring and analyzing the effect levels of some business outcomes, predict chances of future occurrences and effectively design strategies that would prevent such effects in future (Mills, 2007). Through statistics, it is easy to conduct regression analysis that determines how variables are related within an organization thereby enabling the decision makers to identify the influential factors and their impacts on the change of the organization. Connections between issues, business activity and appropriate data Based on this, when the business activity goes down or faces some forms of reduction, the first thing to do to conduct a business study to establish the issues that brought about the changes in activity. In the identification of such issues, it is important to use business statistics which helps in the determination of the impacts each issue has on the activity of the business. Business statistics also help in the determination of the affected business matrices and the various things that need to be done to overcome such effects. After the identification of the issues affecting the business, the next thing to do will be the establishment of the issues affecting the business using the data collected. They can be identified using the relevant statistical matrices (Mills, 2007). The use of appropriate matrices helps in the identification the various parts of the business affected and the extent of their effects. Conclusion The business module has been helpful especially in the analysis of a business with relation to environments that may affect its operations. The skills acquired are also helpful in the formulation of strategies that help in implementing change in global context thereby keeping the organization active throughout. One important thing to focus on is business statistics that help in the determination of the effects of change and formulation of relevant strategies to overcome those effects. References HARRISON, A. L. (2013). Business Environment in a Global Context. MASCULL, B., & KERRIDGE, D. (2007). Best Practice: Business English in Context [3,1] Intermediate [3,1] Intermediate. London, Thomson. MILLS, A. J. (2007). Organizational Behavior in a Global Context. Peterborough, Ont, Broadview Press. Read More