PESTLE anaylis

Last week, we learnt the micro environment in the business and management lessons. It's about Porter's five forces including the threat of new entry, the threat of substitution, buyer power, supplier power and competitive rivalry. And this week, we learnt the macro environment which including political, socio-cultural, economic, legal, technological and environmental. Micro and Macro analysis are both in order to identify whether new products, service or business have the potential to be profitable or not. But the fundamental difference between them is that we cannot do much to change the macro environment except to develop the strategy. In contrast, micro environment is much easier to change and control the situation. But we should both look into the matter when we decide to do business.

I would like to use the example of HSBC bank to discuss about how the macro environment affect the hospital organisation. 

In the political factors, there are many situations will affect the bank. For instance, the government changes its legislations like increasing the taxation. It will directly influent the bank as they might need to hand in more taxes. Therefore, their profits will be decreasing. Moreover, government stability will also affect the bank as if the political situation is not stable, citizens will lose their confidence to invest and it will also stop the potential investors to invest the UK market. 

In the socio-cultural aspect, people's changes in lifestyle and their attitudes to work can also affect the bank. For example, people are having more free time and leisure time in the UK nowadays, they might have more time to study the finance and do some investments. Furthermore, the distribution of income will also affect the bank. According to The Economic Times news on 7th November, it shows that the UK proposes reduced protections for final-salary pension schemes which means that they might decline the pensions in the coming future. It will affect the bank as people will be more conservative on spending money. Therefore, less people will do the investments. 

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-11-07/news/43776303_1_new-pension-schemes-inflation-protection-retirement

In the economic aspect, consumer activity, confidence, spending patterns will also affect the bank. If the consumer have more confident and willing to spend money on investment, it can helps the bank a lot. For instance, there was a piece of news from BBC News on 4th November 2013 which is talking about how the profit surge 30% because of the strong performance in the UK and Hong Kong.  And it can also shows that the importance of the economic relationship with the potential markets as Hong Kong continues to benefit from its close economic relationship with mainland china. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-2480079

And the variable business costs will also affect the business. For example, according to the BBC News on the 29th August 2013, HSBC increased its charges for 700,000 small business customers, many of them losing their free banking service. It will also affect the HSBC Bank.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23890694

In the legal aspect, changes in law will affect the bank as well. As the example above (HSBC increased its charges for 700,000 small business customers, many of them losing their free banking service), it will be a reason that affect the business. Besides, the employment and safety law will also affect the business. The video in the following ground is talking about the HSBC bank plans to cut 14,000 jobs in order to reduce the costs.

In the environmental aspect, green issues, energy consumption, renewable or green energy will affect the organisation as well.  

http://youtu.be/hvtB2459kRw This video is talking about how to building a Low Carbon Britain and the policy to attract green investment to the UK.