tailieunhanh - Business in the global environment

This Commission believes that people can build a future that is more prosperous, more just, and more secure. Our report, Our Common Future, is not a prediction of ever increasing environmental decay, poverty, and hardship in an ever more polluted world among ever decreasing resources. We see instead the possibility for a new era of economic growth, one that must be based on policies that sustain and expand the environmental resource base. And we believe such growth to be absolutely essential to relieve the great poverty that is deepening in much of the developing world | 1 BUSINESS IN THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT 2 The two chapters in this part form a foundation for the book as a whole. In any study of business there is a distinction between matters relating to the enterprise itself often termed the internal environment of the business and matters relating to the external environment such as markets where it aims to sell its products. Although this division is oversimplified as we will find in later chapters it helps to use these contexts for the initial formulation of concepts and issues which will become nuanced in later chapters. Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE BUSINESS ENTERPRISE focuses on the business itself its goals and how it goes about achieving them. The chapter begins by looking at the most basic question of all what does the business exist for Many issues come into play including what it is offering customers the kind of organization it should set up and how to run it. People who start a company do not take these decisions in a vacuum. As soon as they embark on a new business venture they become involved in legal and regulatory frameworks not just in their home countries but in all the countries in which they wish to sell products or run operations. Today s global environment while posing these seemingly daunting obstacles at the outset also offers unprecedented opportunities. For individual firms a crucial element of success is an organization with clear goals an efficient smooth-functioning structure and people committed to organizational goals whatever function they carry out in its overall operations. The last sections in Chapter 1 introduce the business in its external environment setting out the dimensions which will form the basis of separate chapters. In Chapter 2 GLOBALIZATION AND THE BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT we change focus to the external environment with rapidly changing markets and production based on global supply chains. The many processes which are grouped together under the broad heading of globalization are .