External Macro Environment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

External Macro Environment - Essay Example These factors influences a business through causing some major influences on it like competition, changing the interest rates payable by a business on loans and other debts that it, owes, changes in the cultural tastes and preferences of the society, as well as a change in the government regulations, regarding the conduct of such businesses (Porter, 1998 p33). Thus, the external macro environment of a business refers to all the political, social, economic and the technological events, occurrences and trends, which impacts on a business or its market. These factors affect the business indirectly, but the business can only respond to these factors through adopting changes and strategies that will be favorable for its operation, amidst these factors. Therefore, the decision making of a business has to rely on such factors, since they highly determine the success or failure of a business. However, the macro environment creates both favorable and unfavorable environment for the business t o operate on, thus a business has to take advantage of the favorable ones, while strategizing on how to handle the negative influences of this environment. There are various ways in which these external environment factors affect a business and consequently its HR function. Owing to the changes in the business environment that requires that the business costs must be reduced to the lowest possible level, so that the profits earned by the business can reach the expected targets, the HR function of any business has to strategies appropriately towards lowering such costs (Kendon, 190 p13). Notable of these factors that have a great impact on the HR function of a business are the technological and the social factors. Under the social factors, there are such elements as the educational levels, the diversity of the work place employees as well as religion influences. On the technological front, there are elements such as technological changes, improved knowledge and communication channels , and the moral factors (Adams, 1990 p28). There are major changes that have occurred in the HR function, within organizations in the recent past years. These changes are geared towards the decentralization of the HR function within organizations to create a less centralized HR department (Porter, 1998 p45). As a result, the HR functions have been shared within the organization to include other segments and departments of the organization, and thus change the concentration of all the HR activities from the HR department to the other functional department within an organization. This sharing of the HR functions have gone a long way in reducing the costs associated with the depart within organizations, in that the manpower required in this department as well as other tools and equipment has been reduced, by having such functions being undertaken in other segments of the organization (Kendon, 190 p22). The advancement in technology has made this transfer of HR functions to other depart ments and organizational segments possible. Recent social changes have also created several challenges to the HR functions, forcing it to be integrated into the business strategies, to overcome such challenges. The changes that have occurred in the HR function within the last 10 years include, shared services, where, those working under the shared services segment of the organizati