The conduction of the business of any organisation largely depends on the influential factors of the organisation in the context of the specific and general environment of the organisation. The impact of the factors of the general and the specific environment of the organisation plays an important role in the smooth conduction of the business in the organisation. The general aspects like political, technological, economic, global and socio-cultural of the general environment of an organisation are severely important and the smooth functioning of these aspects is highly appreciated from the part of the organisation (Jones & Jones 2013). The factors of the specific environment like competitors, suppliers, customers, regulators, strategic partners, employees, labour unions along with the interest groups are also significantly important for any organisation in order to conduct their business (Huczynski, Buchanan & Huczynski 2013). The ethical approach in their business for any organisation is significantly important as that ensures the belief of the customers will always be associated with the organisation .One of the significant advantages for the organisation in practicing the ethical approach and the corporate social responsibility is the formation of the brand loyalty. The organisations of the modern world inherited the CSR as one of their key strategies in order to spread the brand awareness among the target market. The paper discusses the impact of the mentioned factors of both the specific and the general environment of the organisation and also specifies the impact of real-life dimensions in the context of both the forms of environment. The paper also discusses the impact of the corporate social responsibility and the importance of ethics in the organisation. The chosen organisation is Amcor Limited.
The general environment of an organisation is the broader concept of the combination of the aspects that are connected with each other in order to produce a fruitful business for the organisation. As it is believed to be consisting of the significant influential factors, the effect of these factors on the general environment of an organisation will have significant importance. The segmentation of the general environment of the organisation will observe distinct segments in the form of Technological, Economic, Political or Legal, Global and Socio-cultural (Chhibber 2013, p.278). The organisation, Amcor is a global company but the base of the company in Australia and the organisation in its operation reflects the socio-cultural aspects of the country. The organisation has a hierarchical structure but the conceptual barriers of the hierarchy are observed to be significant. The communication between the different stages of the organisational structure is observed to be informal and participative. The organisation in its wish to achieve greater success always reflects the high percentage in the masculinity dimension of the society (Stahl et al. 2013, p.333).
The technological aspect of the general environment of the concerned organisation generally relates to the processing of the packaging. Amcor is a global packaging organisation which employs the technology in developing the rigid containers, cartons. The organisation is observed to have two different segments in the form of Flexible packaging and the Rigid Plastics. The presence of technology in products of the organisation was visible and that got highlighted with the commercialisation of the Liquiform technology in the month of February this year. The technology used the packaged product in place of compressed air to form and fill the plastic containers at the same time and that was significant in reducing the cost of the traditional blow-moulding, transporting, handling along with the warehousing the empty containers.
The global status of the organisation was significantly visible with the headquarter in Zurich, Switzerland and the organisation was listed on the Australian Security Exchange (Asx.com.au 2018). Along with that the organisation was also included in several international stock indices like Dow Jones Sustainability index, Global Sustainability index, Ethibel Excellence Investment Register (Forum Ethibel 2018).
The organisation was a major player in the packaging industry of the country and became a global leader in the concerned sector as well with market revenue of 9.1 billion US dollar in the financial year of 2017. The organisation entered the China market with the acquisition of Qite for an amount of 28 million US dollar along with that the organisation acquired the Plasticos in the month of May to enter the market of Latin America. All the acquisitions were made by acknowledging the legal and ethical approach to business mergers.
The organisation, being a global market leader, was able to increase the employment in the different parts of the world and was able to increase sales of more than 9 billion US dollars from the 200 operating locations of the organisation over 43 countries (Amcor.com 2018). This was an absolute reflection of the rapid growth of the organisation and the improved functionality of the general environment of the organisation was significant in achieving this.
According to Bridoux and Stoelhorst (2014, p.112), the specific environment of the organisation relates the smaller segments of the general environment and it helps the organisation in order to monitor the details of the organisation in a significantly appropriate manner. As mentioned earlier, the specific environment of the organisation consists of the factors like customers, suppliers, employees or the labour unions, competitors and strategic partners (Zavyalova et al. 2016, p.254). These factors of the specific environment are significantly influential for the organisation.
The organisation serves a wide range of customers in 200 sites of them over 43 countries and the variety of the products of the concerned organisation is significantly crucial in restoring their customers. The organisation kept a close look on the product safety in order to maintain the growth and their infrastructural developments including the introduction of the product safety and compliance personnel for the implementation of the processes and controls along with the keen focus on the improvement of the quality and the ability to assess the risk was significant in holding their customers for a longer period of time.
The organisation in recent times is facing significant challenges from the other market competitors like Ampac, Clondalkin, Constantia Flexibles, Innovia Flims, Mondi and Printpack. The other small market competitors for the concerned organisation will be Sonoco, Bemis, Huhtamki and Westrock (Assets.ctfassets.net 2018). The reason behind the intense competition is visible with the estimated growth of the market at a CAGR of nearly 6%. The estimated incremental growth of the global flexible packaging market for food and beverages in the coming years is approximately 22.66 billion dollars between the years 2017 to 2022 (Assets.ctfassets.net 2018). This is a significant proof of the fact that the market is intense.
The organisation with the various mergers and acquisition is holding the status of being global in a significant manner. The history of the company is filled with mergers and acquisition from the days of the initialisation in Australia. This enabled the organisation to achieve the precious opening in the new business markets like China which is considered as one of the significantly important markets in the Asia Pacific region in the food and beverage industry packaging. Regions like Latin America were also included in the list with the acquisition of the Plasticos.
The organisation had an employee strength of over 35000 over the 43 countries in which the organisation is operating and the segmentation of the employee was 27000 and 7000 in the flexibles and rigid plastics respectively (Amcor.com 2018). The degree of perfection in the operation of the employees was significantly crucial for the organisation in achieving the growth in the sales in the recent times which financially enabled the organisation to acquire other companies of the different region with the focus of expanding their business. The organisation in the annual report of 2017 clarified the guidelines for the employees in achieving safe conduction of the business process.
The effect of the real-life dimension in the context of the specific environment is the impact of the innumerable number of the mergers and acquisitions that the organisation conducted in order to increase the scope of business expansion and the increment in the strategic partners for the organisation. The recent acquisitions that the organisation implemented are the deal between the Qite and Amcor which was of 28 million US dollar. The deal which happened in the month of January last year, enabled the organisation to enter the China market and in the same year the organisation entered the Latin American packaging industry with an acquisition of the Plasticos.
The corporate social responsibility is one of the major aspects of the process of staying connected to the customers. As mentioned above the packaging industry is significantly competitive and the market giants in the concerned industry are considerably close with their sales and the market share. The CSR is an advantageous policy in this case as the CSR has the capability to create a better brand image for the concerned organisation (Schwartz 2017). As the good image of an organisation has the capability to influence the preference of buying of the customers, this will significantly help the concerned organisation in the longer run (Carroll 2015, p.90). The practice of ethics by any organisation has the ability to make a good image of the organisation in front of the government and in that the case the organisation can have the advantages like tax relaxation, land lease and many other governmental aids in improving their business. The CSR is also major tactics in the marketing of the products as the achievement of the brand awareness from the practice of the CSR will enable the products of the organisation get the limelight of the industry in an easier manner (Tai & Chuang 2014, p.117). The CSR will help the organisation to increase the stock prices of the business of the given organisation which will be significant from the stockholder’s perspective. The CSR will enable the organisation in prevention against the social issues before the issues get serious and cause major damage to the organisation. The ethics have a different point of view related to it. It largely depends on the values of an individual or the organisation (Fromm 2013). However the presence of ethics has relatively same level functionality as the CSR as the ethical approach in conducting the business will also enable the organisation in achieving the belief their customers. The organisations must employ the code of ethics for its employees and if needed the training of the ethics as well (Dewey 2016). This will make sure that organisation remains unaffected to any sort of corporate scandal or controversies. The imperfection in practising the ethical behaviour will not only harm the organisation as an institute rather it will affect the morale of its employees.
The concerned organisation was observed to violate the ethics of business conduct at several times. In 2001, the Environment Protection Authority of Victoria fined 10000 Australian dollars to the concerned organisation for pollution (Epa.vic.gov.au 2018). In the year 2006, a story from the Four Corner named as The Team expressed that the organisation used controversial methods in order to influence the forestry policies (Abc.net.au 2018). In the following year, the concerned organisation along with the Visy were found involved in price fixing and market sharing in the industry for corrugated fibreboard packaging supply. The recent controversy from the organisation took place in the year 2008 when the concerned organisation was convicted for unethically releasing oil to the Yarra River from its Aplington, Victoria plant and the Heidelberg Magistrates’ Court fined 80000 Australian dollars to the chosen organisation (Magistratescourt.vic.gov.au 2018). The unethical conduct of releasing the industrial oil to the river was a major fault from the part of the organisation in the context of social responsibility.
As stated by Abdi and Senin (2014, p.09), the organisational culture of a particular organisation helps the concerned organisation in improving in different aspects like risk assessment, innovation, stability of the organisation. The concerned organisation Amcor had significant growth because of the aggressiveness of their employees in managing incremental production rate. The organisation was having sales of 9.1 billion US dollars over the 200 sites of it and Western Europe and North America were observed to have almost the same percentage of the sales of the Emerging markets. The sales of the flexible and the rigid plastic segment were 5.7 and 2.9 billion US dollars respectively (Assets.ctfassets.net 2018). This was a crucial proof of the fact that the employees of the organisation were not going to achieve anything less than their ultimate goal. The spirit of innovation for the organisation was visible from the statement of the CEO, Ron Delia where the CEO confessed that they are going to improve the environmental profile of their operations. The EnviroAction program from the part of the organisation is one of the significant steps towards the innovation and can be considered as one of the CSR activities as well where the organisation reduced greenhouse gas emissions, waste going to landfills and usage of the water (Assets.ctfassets.net 2018). This resulted in enhancing the sustainability for the organisation and for the technological advancement and responsible packaging, the organisation won three DuPont Global Packaging Awards (Dupont.com 2018).
As mentioned earlier, the organisation is one of the market giants in the global packaging industry and being in a competitive market, the organisation is having an intense work environment where each and every employee is going to increase their productivity. Hence the work pressure will be severe in such an organisation. Amcor is having a continuous rise in their growth and with the rate of growth, the organisation can be considered to have a stable business but with the considerable amount of market competitors, the organisation can expect an incredible amount of unpredictability related to it. The organisation looks for the satisfaction of their employees in order to make sure that the organisation continues to have certain amount effective and productive employees associated with them and hence it can be stated that there may be an intense pressure of work but the employees will be managed by the organisation in the right manner. The organisation significantly depends on the collective approach and it goes against one of the societal aspects of their parent country Australia which is lack of collectivism. The organisation seeks complete performance from their employees but also acknowledges the importance of the inadequate performance as the organisation considers that the collective effort will be influential in implementing their massive desired goals. The hierarchical management of the organisation along with the senior executives specifies their mission or objective or the decisions to the employees in details so that the organisation can adopt according to the desired objectives. The drive for improvement and growth enables the organisation in taking difficult tasks and risks at times and that would be significantly appreciated as the thrill and excitement will be intense.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the organisation, Amcor is a premier organisation in the global packaging industry with rapid growth and interest on the implementation of the technological advancement in their processing. The organisation culture of the concerned organisation was observed to be progressive and the organisation was observed to conduct a few unethical actions in order to ride the rapid growth. The Organisation seemed to be influenced by the factors of the specific and general environment in a great deal and was trying to incorporate Corporate Social Responsibility by their power of innovation.
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