The External Environment of an Organization: a Management Perspective - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages From the broadest perspective, the organizational environment comprises all of the things that are outside of the organization. Such a perspective, however, is self-defeating, as it is infinite and conveys hardly any useful information to the practice of management. Daft, Murphy & Willmott, 2010, p.140, provides a more comprehensible definition of organizational environment as “all elements that exist outside the boundary of the organization and have the potential to affect all or part of the organization.” Several sectors with similar elements that have the potential to affect all or part of an organization are easily identifiable. They are industry, raw materials, human resources, financial resources, market, technology, economic conditions, government policies and regulations, socio-cultural elements and international elements. When we consider the external domain of an organization, it pertains to the organization niche and the specific external sectors that organization chooses as important to it and hence interacts with it, for the purpose of achieving the objectives of the organization. In this regard, the environment of an organization is thus selected and interpreted by the managers in an organization. Through this, some features of the external environment have a greater emphasis on the neglect of the others. Thus, the domain of organizational environment is dependent to a large extent on the choice of the managers. There are two dimensions that play a significant role in this choice. ...Download file to see next pagesRead More