Changing Environment for Business

Changing Environment for Business

The first chapter of the book “Corporate Communication” written by Paul A. Argenti brings the aspect of communication in context with historic attitudes towards American business. Afterwards effects of globalization and antiglobalization respectively on communication are discussed. And last but not least it will be discussed how improved corporate communication can help a business to deal with the constantly changing environment.

Attitudes toward American business through the years

In the 1860s existed very bad working conditions and during the following industrial revolution even woman and children had to work in this miserable conditions. During the1920s situation got even worse, when the stock market bubble burst and led to the Great Depression. The only positive attitude towards American business occurred from 1940 to 1960, a time period also known as the “golden age”. But soon in the 1970s incidences like the Vietnam War, Watergate and the oil embargo turned the business image into negative again. Up to today the image of business never turned really positive again, even though the 80s and 90s constituted the final economic boom of the 20th century. This might be a result of the stock market crash in 2000 and the lack of confidence in big companies because, for example of the Enron scandal in 2002. To sum it up, most of the times the image of the Unites States business had been regarded as negative by American people.

Hollywood: A window on Main Street and Wall Street

Another reason for the negative image of business today may be the negative portrait of businessman in TV-shows and Hollywood films. In two-thirds of the TV shows business people are portrayed negatively. According to a research American people spend 40 to 50 hours per week in front of a TV and that is a lot more than they spend time in a classroom. Additional the news on TV are,of course only presenting the bad examples of business. Therefore negative portraits in fictional programs blend into the negative news. As a result the bad image of business will build up.

Global Village

The fast improvements in technology in the last years let the world become a “Global Village”. Especially the Internet helped to virtually “eliminate” national borders and time frames, coupled with liberalization of trade and finance. To remain competitive in this every day smaller getting world, there is no way to avoid operating in countries with fragile economies, weak democratic systems and overburdened infrastructures, because if you will not, your competitors will. However, those globally operating companies will also have to face the anti-globalization movement. People joining this movement believe for example that globalization will destroy individual national cultures and national workstations. In addition they protest against exploitation of poorer countries (e.g. child labor).

How to compete in a changing environment

In the following there are presented four steps, which can help companies to deal with the direction of greater scrutiny, the less favorable impressions of companies and the constantly changing environment in general.
· Recognize changing Environment
Managers need to be aware of the changing environment, which is sometimes just not the case because of short term orientation. Ignoring environmental changes in the long run can have damaging results for companies. Therefore it is important for companies to identify quickly on which changes they need to react.
· Adapt to the environment without compromising principles
It is crucial not to change the company’s philosophy or what the company stands for. Customers will recognize this change and will switch to products of another company if they disagree with the change.
· Do not assume problems will magically disappear
If something in a company goes wrong, managers will do better, if they do something about it. This is because public memories are sometimes longer than someone may think and unwanted boycotts of a firm may be the result.
· Keep corporate communication connected to strategy
Corporate communication should be closely linked to a companies overall vision and strategy. The mission statement, which inherences the companies strategy, needs to be communicated to internal and external persons, in the right way.

Conclusion

The constantly and fast changing business environment demands for strategically communication. To have success in 21st century someone has to pay attention to the way he communicates for example behavior, changes and future plans of the company.

Personnel experiences:

A personal experience of mine with the changing business environment was the necessity of the internet for university. Before university I have been on the internet too, but more for fun rather than for research purposes. When I then started my studies, I experienced that there was no way of studying properly without an internet access. Nowadays I use the internet daily, for study purposes, checking E-Mails and staying in contact with friends and family via Skype.

Another experience with the changing business environment occurred during my apprenticeship in a forwarding company. At this time the company was under the pressure to get certified after an ISO norm, which means among other things that there had to be standardized ways of internal and external communication. To fulfill the criteria of certification it got obvious how less attention before was paid to communication processes, which also led to a loss of information.


Links:

The Explanation of the term “Global Village”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_village_(Internet)

The Global Policy Forum about Globalization:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/index.htm

A contribution to the fast changing business environment:
http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/crosscuttings/new_economy_transition.html