Responsible Consumption and Production

Living Edition
| Editors: Walter Leal Filho, Anabela Marisa Azul, Luciana Brandli, Pinar Gökcin Özuyar, Tony Wall

Business Environment: Emerging External and Internal Pressures for Sustainable Production

  • Natalia SaukkonenEmail author
  • Johanna KirjavainenEmail author
Living reference work entry
First Online:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71062-4_1-1
How to cite

Synonyms

Competitive environment; External business environment; Internal business environment; Macro environment; Microenvironment; Operational environment; Organizational environment; Sustainable production

Definition

Companies need understanding about their business environment to stay competitive, survive, and prosper (Duncan 1972; Dreyer and Grønhaug 2004). Research has developed numerous methods for organizations to scan and build scenarios on their environment (see Amer et al. 2013 for overview). In general, describing the business environment requires analyzing the external and internal context in which the company operates.

Companies’ external environment includes relevant factors outside the boundaries of the organization (Duncan 1972). These factors can occur generally as macro-level trends or as micro-level changes in companies’ immediate operational environment. There is a dynamic interaction between the macro and micro levels. Focusing on a specific level of analysis...

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Copyright information

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Dept of Industrial Engineering and ManagementTampere UniversityTampereFinland

Section editors and affiliations

  • Ulla Saari
    • 1
  1. 1.Dept of Industrial Management, Center for Innovation and Technology ResearchTampere UniversityTampereFinland