For any corporation to succeed, all the factors that influence its operations must be coordinated and organized so that they function in harmony. Some of these factors include strategic environmental factors which can further be divided into strategic internal environmental factors and external environmental factors. The external environmental factors of for instance, a business corporation are all factors outside the business organization that are considered when undertaking its decision-making process. These factors include the legal landscape, the interaction of the government or even the state of the economy.The internal environmental factors are those that lie within the business such as experienced personnel, sufficient funds among others.
In order to obtain information on strategic environmental factors, a corporation must conduct environmental scanning (Cunningham, 1993). This scanning helps the corporation be in a position of assessing all the elements that surround the corporation’s operations and the market. Environmental scanning considers three environments that play a very crucial a role in the corporation’s development.These environments include the global environment whereby all the organizations operate, industrial environment in which the corporation plans to compete or is already competing and finally the internal environment. The environmental scan also helps in identifying the prevailing challenges as well as opportunities that are available for the corporation’s success. A corporation should also conduct a SWOT Analysis (Strengths, weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) in order to obtain information about strategic environmental factors.
SWOT analysis will provide a reliable direction to the corporation at the same time providing a strong basis for marketing plans development. (Ioannides, Keith & Debbage, 1998). It does all this by looking into what can be done by an organization, that is, its strengths, what it is not able to do, that is, its weaknesses, the available conditions that favor the organization, that is, its opportunities and the unfavorable conditions that the organization may face, that is, its threats.The strengths and weaknesses address the internal issues of the corporation while the opportunities and threats address the external issues of the corporation.
In order to ensure that this information about the strategic environmental factors gets to the attention of the strategy makers, the corporation should ensure that there is a good flow of information within the corporation’s management structure. The top managers of the corporation should also keep in touch with the strategy makers to ensure that the strategies formulated for the corporation address the issue of strategic environmental factors.It is through the address of these factors on the corporation’s long-term strategies that will enable the corporation to change its decisions when time demands so as to remain competitive in the global market. The corporation should also ensure that its strategy makers are well trained and have the required experience in strategy making. Qualified strategy makers are able to utilize all the information provided on strategic environmental factors to formulate the corporation’s strategies. (Schippmann, 1999).
These strategies should lay a strong basis on which the corporation should always evaluate its progress and its opportunities to succeed. They should also be flexible to change such that they can accommodate any change effected for the growth and success of the corporation may be due to stiff competition in the current area of location or even due to rapid change of technology in the competitive market environment. In-service training should also be provided constantly to the strategy makers since these factors keep on changing in any given business environment.
