P5- the Business Environment

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P5: Describe the influence of two contrasting economic environments on business activities within a selected organisation The business environment consists of a range of major influences that are outside a business. These include political, social and legal changes that affect a business. I will be looking at how two economic environmental problems influence a business. Economic Environment: The totality of economic factors, such as employment, income, inflation, interest rates, productivity, and wealth, that influence the buying behavior of consumers and institutions. The economy is made up of millions of individual decision makers who buy and sell goods, borrow and lend money, and raise taxes and change interest rates. From the business point of view, the most important of these decision makers are: * Consumers * Suppliers * Bankers and other lenders * The government Although the economy is made up of millions of separate decision makers, there are clear patterns to the types of decisions they make. For example, at times of consumer confidence, most consumers will raise their levels of spending and businesses will increase their supply of goods. Impact of changes in the economic environment Growth: The opposite of a recession is a period of economic growth. Growth occurs when more goods are being produced and consumed, and incomes are rising. Economic growth is associated with a ripple effect because people have more money to spend, they will buy more goods. Producers will make more goods. They will hire more labour and invest in new machinery and equipment. This leads to increase in demand for firms producing machinery and equipment so they take on more labour. Recession is a significant decline in activity across the economy, lasting longer than a few months. The technical indicator of a recession is two consecutive quarters of
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