LECTURER WEEK 3 (24/9/2013)

Chapter 3: Evaluating A Company’s External Environment. 

We get a lot of new information. In this chapter, I know about PESTEL analysis. PESTEL is a company’s external environments that influence the organisational. It is used to describe an analysis that is used for determining the opportunities and risks of global expansion. PESTEL issues often differ domestically and even more so internationally. As a company who looks to leverage the advantages that the democratisation of technology, information and finance, and grow beyond the national borders that previously confined them, it is imperative that they consider a PESTEL analysis that provides a strong framework to set the stage to develop specific tactics to mitigate the risks involved in executing their vision in unfamiliar environments.

PESTEL analysis focuses on the six principal components which consist of:

Political factors

We can see how far government intervention on the system of economic. The government intervention include in matters like tax policy, fiscal policy, labour law, tariffs, the political stability and trade restrictions. These include goods and services which the government wants to provide or to be provided or do not want of both. Moreover, governments have great influence on the health, education, and infrastructure of a nation.

Economic conditions

Include the economic growth, interest rates, exchange rates and the inflation rate, unemployment rate and etc. These factors have major impacts on how businesses operate and make decisions. For example, interest rates affect a firms cost of capital and how far a business grows and expands. Exchange rates can affect the costs of exporting goods and the supply and price of imported goods in an economy.

Sociocultural forces

Include the cultural aspects, societal values, attitudes and also include demographic factors such as the population growth rate and age distribution. Sociocultural forces vary by locale and change over time. For example, a population may imply a smaller and less-willing workforce can cause a increasing the cost of labour. Furthermore, companies may change various management strategies to adapt to these social trends such as recruiting older workers.

Technological Factors

A technological aspects such as R&D activity, automation, technology incentives and the rate of technological change and also government control over the Internet that have the potential for wide-ranging effects on society. Technological change can encourage the birth of new industries such as based on nanotechnology and furthermore, technological shifts also can affect costs, quality, and lead to innovation.

Environmental forces

This include ecological and environmental aspects such as weather, climate, and climate change, which may affect industries such as tourism, farming, and insurance. Furthermore, growing awareness of the potential impacts of climate change is affecting how companies operate and the products they offer. They may have an indirect but substantial effect on other industries such as transportation and utilities.

Legal and regulatory factors

These include the regulations and laws include discrimination law, consumer law, employment law, and health and safety law and so on. These factors can affect how a company operates, the costs and the demand for their products. Others, such as minimum wage legislation, affect certain types of industries (low-wage, labour-intensive industries) more than others.

In tutorial class, we were asked by the tutor who is the new giant economy? We state various answers such as United States, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Switzerland and other. Actually the new giant economy was called:

Brazil

Russia

India

China
Korea

Assalmualaikum, oh no!!. i'm really sorry. i made a wrong, before this i post at the wrong place(site). Erm..I think I'm too late to share at this blog what i have learn for strategic management... So i like to start back from my first lecturer.

First lecture (10/09/13)

Today is the first day I start the class for this semester. The class started at 8am. Wow… it’s in early morning, I’m very excited. This class is for subject Strategic Management. Miss Ummi Salwa bt Ahmad Bustamam as our lecturer is very active. She doesn’t like to just stay in front of us and we just to hear her. So, she likes to go around in the class and ask various questions. As usual for the first lecture, a lecturer will brief to the entire student about course outline, assessment, final exam, book that will use and an introduction about the subject. Miss Ummi informs that our class tutor would be conducted by Puan Siti Nurul Huda Nordin.

Miss Ummi explain that this subject will be 60% for Continuous Assessment and the final exam is 40%. Continuous Assessment would consist of Teamwork assignment, Individual assignment, Participation (tutorial + case study), online forum, online quiz, Peer-review and Presentation. Miss Ummi encourages us to read more article and news about business from any source like the star, news strait time and others. She also wants us to read about politics, socials and etc. 

Before she ended the class for today, she ask us to form ten groups and a group consist of 15 people. And then she orders us to build tower from newspaper and the newspaper is provide by her. What we have to do is to build the tall tower based on our own material and creativity. We were free to use any kind of material such as stapler, glue, tape and so on. All of us were given 10 minutes to finish the tower and the evaluation was to find both the highest and the strongest tower. The tower that our group build is the last second tower that fall because our tower not strong enough. After that, she ask us what the conclusion what we have for that activities. For my own view, we had to have plan strategy before to do something. This will give us the efficient plans.

Second lecture (17/09/13)

This week, Miss Ummi covers for two topics which is the nature of strategic management and the business vision and mission for the lecturer.

First, the nature of strategic management is about the introduction of strategic management. Strategic management can be describing as the art and science of formulating, implementing and evaluating cross-functional. The example of cross-functional is human resource department, financial department, EPS and others. The different between strategic management and planning is planning only about strategy formulation not include implementing and evaluating cross-functional.

Secondly, the business vision and mission. A vision statement should answer the fundamental question, ‘’what do we want to become?’’. Vision is also can be said as our own objective that we want to achieve. Meanwhile, mission is synonymous with the question ‘’what is our business?’’ and it is as the tools that assist get the vision. There are many names for mission such as a statement of philosophy and others.

Anyway, in tutorial class, we discuss more detail about our vision and mission to USIM. My vision come o USIM is to finish my study and separate what I learn to society. So, for my mission to achieve that vision is I should gain as much as possible a knowledge and collect more experiences. For get a lot of knowledge and experience, I have to attend a various programs that can help to increase my knowledge for something new. OH, so interesting! (^_^)