Understanding of the Contextual Factors

Question: Discuss about the Showing an Ability to Explain major domestic and international contextual factors and how they affect business structures and strategy. Answer: Introduction: In the present business environment, businesses have to deal with several internal and external factors in order to achieve sustainable growth in the market. External factors include governmental policies, legislative regulations, market values and culture, technology advancement and industry characteristics (Marchi, Maria Micelli, 2013). On the other hand, internal factors include organizational structure, work environment and leadership that can have major impact on the decision-making strategies for fulfilling all the business objectives. In this essay, the focus would be on the effective evaluation of the business context of one of the prime Australia based organizations namely Wesfarmers. The revenue level of Wesfarmers was estimated around A$ 66 billion in the year of 2016 (wesfarmers.com.au, 2017). It highlights the fact that Wesfarmers has able to counter all the internal and external factors related challenges for creating desired impact on the revenue level. The essay woul d focus on analyzing the way Wesfarmers implement strategies for countering adverse impact of all the internal and external contextual factors. Discussion: As per the article by Corcoran et al. (2012), effective development of organizational structure is essential for performing all the responsibilities related with the business process. For that reason, Wesfarmers has focused on developing appropriate organizational structure through which all the requirements can be fulfilled at the highest order. Many studies have highlighted different types of organizational structures including functional structure, divisional structure and matrix structure from which organizations can select any one for performing all the activities in an effective manner (Casadesus?Masanell Zhu, 2013). Now, Wesfarmers have focused on utilizing matrix organizational structure, as it deals with diversified business responsibilities (Santos-Vijande, Lpez-Snchez Trespalacios, 2012). It has allowed Wesfarmers to develop different departments based on the specification of jobs so that employees do not have to face any challenges in understanding their responsibilitie s. It has also allowed Wesfarmers to formulate strong communicational network within and across departments in an effective manner (Robbins et al., 2013). As a result, it has helped Wesfarmers to confront with different risks related to internal business environment. On the other hand, Wesfarmers also have provided enough opportunities to all the employees in sharing their though and believes regarding a crucial organizational decision. Therefore, it has encouraged employees to perceive themselves as a valuable factor within the organization structure (Perkins, 2012). As a result, it has also created positive impact on the employee engagement perspective. It has been assessed that employee engagement is critical for fulfilling all the provided responsibilities in a major way. It not only allows organizations to develop strong communicational structure but also help to keep all the employees motivated towards the organizational roles and responsibilities. Wesfarmers have provided enough space for the employees to communicate with each other. Therefore, it has also helped the organization to enhance the understanding among each other (Oyedijo, 2012). As a result, it has influenced employees to remain on the right frame of mind, which will direct th e business process towards fulfilling business aims and objectives. It has been assessed that Wesfarmers is dealing in extremely competitive business environment, where it has to face several other corporate giants for achieving desired sales volume. Therefore, Wesfarmers will not have the benefits of sole trader, which would allow organization to gain major share of the market (Dursun Kilic, 2012). For that reason, Wesfarmers need to focus on assessing strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats in a comprehensive way. Thus, the nature of the business has influenced Wesfarmers to invest huge amount of marketing and promotional activities for maximizing the impact on the desired market. However, high investment always includes high risk that Wesfarmers will have to counter in order to achieve sustainable growth in the market. In addition, presence in the diverse sector has complicated the overall business procedure of Wesfarmers in a major way. Therefore, it has induced management to utilize diversified strategies at the same time for maximizing the revenue level of the organization (Chen et al., 2012). For that reason, it has induced Wesfarmers to conduct meeting on regular basis for assessing the exact impact of each strategy on the desire market. It has also focused on utilizing market research technique in order to understand the exact needs and wants of the customers. Therefore, it will allow the organization to provide products and services at the optimum level. It will reduce the amount of risk organization have to face from the external environment. As per the article by Verbeke (2013), technological changes have created major impact on the way all the activities are conducted for fulfilling organizational responsibilities. It has also allowed organizations to gain competitive advantage in the global market. Now, Wesfarmers has always tried to include all the advance technologies for covering for maximizing the utility of all the available resources. Now, in order to utilize all the advance technologies in an appropriate manner, organizations have to provide employees enough training and development opportunities so that they can handle all the resources in an effective manner (Jekimovics, Wickham Danzinger, 2013). For that reason, it will induce management of Wesfarmers to invest specific amount to avoid any internal challenges for fulfilling all the organizational responsibilities. On the other hand, effective use of training and development facilities would allow employees to work on the specialized area (Ludwig, Hellweg St ucki, 2012). Moreover, global presence of Wesfarmers induced organization to handle differences in culture, values and believes of the people who are living in different economies for maximizing the profit level. Now, proper understanding of cultural differences requires management to focus on different types of decision-making strategies for fulfilling the global market needs (Rae, Sands Gadenne, 2014). For that reason, management needs to focus on assessing different management strategies for fulfilling all the business requirements in an effective manner. Maintenance of legislative rules and regulation is essential for the organizations to conduct all the requirements of the business in an appropriate manner (Pagani, 2013). Maintenance of legal guidelines will allow organization to develop strong reputation in the market, which will eventually create positive impact on the overall business level. For that reason, management of Wesfarmers have consciously focused on maintaining all the legislative rules and regulations developed by different economies for ensuring success in the global market. For instance, Wesfarmers has focused on maintain guidelines regarding trade restriction, interest rate, inflation, tax and subsidy rate for maximizing the revenue level with the global market (Klettner, Clarke Boersma, 2014). In addition, Wesfarmers also has focused on maintain the minimum wage laws developed by different countries for keeping employees motivated towards provided roles and responsibilities. On the other hand, environment has eme rged as critical factor that induce organizations to utilize different innovative strategies in order to counter all the business related challenges in an appropriate manner (Casadesus?Masanell Zhu, 2013). For that reason, Wesfarmers has focused on performing several CSR activities like providing education to the poor children, tree plantation, waste management and minimization of natural resource consumption in order to represent it as responsible corporate citizen. Conclusion: The above discussion has highlighted the fact that organizations need evaluate both internal and external factors in an in-depth manner for developing effective counter strategies. The essay has mentioned that present competitive business environment has provided no other options but to avoid all the positive and negative factors as much as possible. Wesfarmers has tried to develop strategies in such a way so that it can minimize the adverse impact associated with the positive and negative factors. For that reason, it can be mentioned that both internal and external factors can create major impact on the decision-making process of the organization. References: Casadesus?Masanell, R., Zhu, F. (2013). 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