Analyzing External Environmental Factors Affecting an Organization using the STEEPLE model

Selecting an Organization for Analysis

You are required to select an organisation (any industry, sector and size having access to reliable information in the UK or abroad) with the requirement to analyse and evaluate the External environmental factors that affects the selected organisation ability to achieve its strategy. This includes changes imposed by the government or aspects such as the impact of the economic environment on organisational operations or perhaps something about the way in which organisations respond to changing socio cultural or environmental issues. You are required to use the Steeple model, which we will be discussed in class as the basis for your analysis.

There is Not a requirement to analyse the internal environment as the scope of the assignment is to inform the selected organisation’s management about the changing external environment. The selected organisation Only acts as a ‘central point’ to structure your analysis. (for example, TESCO supermarkets might be the focus organisation. This falls withing the ‘food retailing’ sector. We do not want you to describe in detail TESCO simply why you have chosen this organisation. More importantly, we expect you to explore the business environmental sector issues, which might be impacting TESCO as part of the Food retail sector)

You are Not required to consider all dimensions of the STEEPLE tool, but rather you should decide which factor or factors are the most relevant and important to the analysis for the selected organisation, providing a brief explanation in your introduction as to why you chose that factor or factors. (Maximum of two external environmental factors)

The assignment is a maximum of 1500 words report, and it should be submitted electronically to the Dropbox to meet the submission deadline provided to you. When you submit the report online. As this is a short assignment, you may use some Tables, Diagrams and Charts to convey information, but the report should be written in paragraphs with an introduction, a main section, a conclusion, and list of references (Tables, Diagrams and charts together with references not included in the word count). Do not overuse bullet points. You are allowed to provide Appendices only to display important information around your analysis. Note that you are not required to put forward suggestions as to how the organisation should respond to the impact of the external factor(s) you have analysed. You are mainly interested in the critical assessment of the external environment.

The work should be fully referenced by using the Harvard Referencing system.

As with all assignments, you must demonstrate your wider reading and research. So, for example, if you decide to discuss economic factors affecting organisations, then you should include relevant economic information such as interest rates, or the rate of inflation in order to then consider how economic indicators help us to analyse the business operations. The starting point for your reading should always be the core textbook(s) for the module including academic articles, industry reports and professional bodies. There is an extensive list of resources in the module handbook which can support your reading. Many organisations are members of Employer’s Associations and these bodies quite often have sector information available. We do not expect you to purchase any information. Sector’s analyst reports are very expensive.