PESTEL

This chapter outlines a common framework for assessing the macroenvironment. The acronym PESTEL is often used to describe the political, economic, sociocultural, technological, environmental, and legal components of the macro-environment. PESTEL is a framework tool that provides a guideline for marketers to be comprehensive when assessing macro-environmental forces.

A Firm’s External Macro Environment: PESTEL

  • What makes up a firm's external macro environment, and what tools do strategists use to understand it?

The world at large forms the external environment for businesses. A firm must confront, adapt to, take advantage of, and defend itself against what is happening in the world around it to succeed. To make gathering and interpreting information about the external environment easier, strategic analysts have defined several general categories of activities and groups that managers should examine and understand.


Components of a Firm's Environment

A firm's macro environment contains elements that can impact the firm but are generally beyond its direct control. These elements are characteristics of the world at large and are factors that all businesses must contend with, regardless of the industry they are in or type of business they are. In the (Figure), the macro environment is indicated in blue. Note that the terms contained in the blue ring are all "big-picture" items that exist independently of business activities. That is not to say that they do not affect firms or that firm activities cannot affect macro environmental elements; both can and do happen, but firms are largely unable to directly change things in the macro environment.

Strategists study the macro environment to learn about facts and trends that may present opportunities or threats to their firms. However, they do not usually just think in terms of SWOT. Strategists have developed more discerning tools to examine the external environment.

Source: OpenStax, https://opentextbc.ca/principlesofmanagementopenstax/chapter/a-firms-external-macro-environment-pestel/
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