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Environmental Scan 1 Environmental Scan 6 Environmental Scan Robert Gil STR /23/2017 Claudia Duranceau Introduction In the Foodservice industry that are many organizations providing all essentials required to run a reliable and stable environment. Compass Group USA is an organization that provides foodservice and support services to corporate cafeterias, arenas, museums, award winning restaurants and other related organizational needs ("Who We Are", 2017). Although it is an international company providing their services in over 50 countries and over 50,000 locations, the U.S. branch began in 1994 when it acquired Canteen. Compass Group has been around for over 75 years and it continues to grow each day ("Who We Are", 2017).
One of the reasons it has been successful, it’s because Compass Group scans its environment and adjust accordingly in order to stay competitive and profitable for the sake of its shareholders. Environmental Scanning Strategy Organizations are always encountered by opportunities and threats. Environmental scanning helps identify those areas. In this instance, Compass Group environmental scanning needs to collect data about their organization and its goods and services and then collect the same about competitors in the same or similar shared markets ("Strategic Planning: What Are The Basics Of Environmental Scanning?", 2012). The information will then be used to adjust their plans and strategies to continue to be competitive and profitable.
An important step in environmental scanning for Compass Group is to learn how government affects local businesses and how laws and the economy stand in any new possible market. Factors such as population and the size as well as the demographic where the new location should be established ("Strategic Planning: What Are The Basics Of Environmental Scanning?", 2012). All these different factors are important because Compass Group can learn how their competitors are handling specific issues in the current local market share. External Environment An organization can be affected by the external environments. These types of factors are beyond the reach of an organization because the business can lack function from the effects of these elements.
Some factors can be addressed by adjusting the marketing strategy, but other may require more drastic adjustments to be in compliance. Factors such as customers, government, economy, competitors and public opinion are considered the external environment (Root III, 2017). Customers can be influence by making changes or redirecting marketing strategies to regain customer confidence. Ultimately, it is best to know and understand the customer more closely because this will help you influence them in obtaining the services Compass Group offers. On the other hand, government can become rather costly.
Because of regulations in State and Federal laws, these can affect the cost of doing business. Compass Group has set pricing for their services and it guarantees their services at the cost agreed upon signed contract, but the profit margin can be drastically reduced if government enforce new legislation that would cost money to get up to standards. Profit margin is also connected to the economy. Compass Group must constantly review and monitor changes in the economy. For example, avocados and meats have recently been affected by the weather’s damage to land, therefore their prices have sky rocketed.
These changes may affect temporally, but hey can last longer than expected and the business will have to adjust how it serves its clients if there is no room for adjustment. But competition can also affect the way the business will need to adjust their pricing (Root III, 2017). Open markets where competition is minimal might be ideal to startup new locations, but for the most, it is what happens to the competition that allows the market share to shift. Competitors may be affected from public opinion. Something drastic could have taken place within the organization and clients do not want to deal with organizations that have negative impact in partnerships (Root III, 2017).
Therefore, public opinion is important to upkeep because it can affect the way new and current clients view the organization. General & Operating Environments PESTEL analysis refers to the six segments that are within the general environment of an organization. Political, Economic, social, technological, environmental and legal are the segments for each letter of the analysis ("The Elements Of The General Environment: Pestel Analysis", 2017). For Compass Group, the political can refer to taxation and tariffs changes for importing or exporting of goods used each day such as fruits, vegetables. Any additional fees paid can affect the bottom line.
Economic factors can be driven from how the GDP adjusts each day or how the unemployment rate fluctuates. But it can also refer to as how much money or cash flow an organization has to use for services and this can affect how new businesses are acquired, but also how current businesses are lost due to lack of cash flow. Social factors are those that derived from trends whether it is from age, ethnicity or cultural status. Compass Group has been successful at functioning in a large demographic area and continues to grow. Technological factors are those that as new technology becomes available, organizations promote the use of them and sometimes are connected to the environmental factors which can put a business at a loss if the competition is offering a more earth friendly use of technology alongside their business.
But also following the legal factors such as safety, employment rights and healthy work environments are examples how well an organization will develop public relations in the long run. Conclusion Environmental scanning reveals what the competition is doing and it helps the organization develop strategies to better themselves as well as to stay in competition s well as to stay profitable. Compass Group continues to grow and acquire new business and as long as it is growing, it will have to continue examining its external, general and operating environments in order to maintain a competitive edge among its known rivals. Applying technology and reviewing data, are crucial to a well establish footing for the future and with the strategy building and adjusting, Compass will continue to have success.
References Clayton, J. (2017). The Five Stages of the Strategic Management Process. Retrieved from Compass Group Mission & Vision. (2017). Retrieved from Root III, G. (2017). Five Components of an Organization's External Environment.
Retrieved from Strategic Planning: What are the basics of environmental scanning? (2012). Retrieved from The Elements of the General Environment: PESTEL Analysis. (2017). Retrieved from Who We Are. (2017). Retrieved from 1 The Movie Fight Club: A Master-Slave Dialectic Hegel’s master/slave dialectic has influenced and opened the doors for later philosophers like Michel Foucault and Fredrich Nietzsche to illuminate and give insight to the cultural norms and values of history. In this essay, I will write about the basis of the master/slave dialectic while first giving the background story which leads up to it.
Then, I will connect this story for philosophical insight into the 1999 film Fight Club to put into perspective how the power relations are formed between the master and slave and how fear and no fear, respectively, allow for the agency of allegiance or breed a new type of dominant agency between individuals or collective consciousness. Finally, I will conclude with an answer to the limitation of Hegel’s insights from the fact that the movement as to how one may proceed from fear to no fear (such that one moves from slave to master consciousness and vice versa) is not shown. Without such explicit technical insight, I believe that Hegel’s dialectic may only provide with historical insights and thus cannot be insightful to future presuppositions.
From what has so far been said, consciousness now seems to be stuck in despair and pessimism about the knowledge about sense-certainty and perception. Therefore, it looks elsewhere to satisfy its desire; it turns away from external objects and into itself as a self-consciousness being. Consciousness now seeks to destroy external objects as a way to recognize itself as a conscious being as an agent. As Hegel remarks, “it destroys the independent object and thereby gives itself the certainty of itself as the true certainty, a certainty which has become explicit for self-consciousness itself in an objective manner†(PS, 174) But this endeavor also becomes self-defeating given that self-consciousness will continually need more objects to destroy and without continually doing so, it will not have a constantly definite and permanent satisfaction.
So what could consciousness find to provide it with a constant definite and permanent satisfaction? From this point, we may now observe how consciousness attempts to find that lucid and constant certainty for itself in an objective manner in the master-slave dialectic. Afterward, we will move on to its application to a contemporary example to illustrate how insightful Hegel’s dialectic can be to even our everyday thinking. When one self-consciousness meets another, it comes out of itself by the fact that it is being perceived the other self-consciousness; another self-consciousness is essentially objectifying it. Each consciousness is “indeed certain of its own self, but not of the other, and therefore, its own self-certainty still has no truth.†(PS, 186).
For example, self-consciousness A perceives self-consciousness B and vice-versa. When this happens, it becomes apparent to A that his objective self-certainty is not as he knows it to be, since B is (initially) perceiving A in his own subjective manner such that A’s self-certainty becomes “A’s self-certainty†for B. This applies to self-consciousness B simultaneously. As a result, A’s a perception that “‘A’s self-certainty’ for B†does not equal nor correspond with “A’s self-certainty (for A)†and vice-versa. By not willing and being afraid to stake his own life, the slave submits to recognize the other as a master to keep his own life.
Due to this fact, he essentially continues his being in absolute fear and conquest of the master-consciousness. The slave becomes the object of the master’s desire for recognition of himself, as his mirror. Also, the master sees its own agency in the slave; i.e., self-consciousness A (the master) now perceives himself as he truly is objectively for-himself in self-consciousness B (the submitted slave). Such that the master now owns the slave’s agency, the slave may now be viewed as the one who works and does the bidding of the master while the master sits back and does nothing as he is content with the recognition he desires. However, since the slave is not an equal of the master, the master cannot become fully recognized because his identity should depend on a genuine mutual recognition for it to be pure.
The slave, as an alienated other and as a lesser and differing type than the master, cannot offer a genuine mirror for the master’s recognition. The master self-consciousness thus diminishes the slave and becomes unfulfilled with the recognition not being indeed what it is; the master would instead want a mutual recognition because that would be more harmonious and coherent than from an alienated and inauthentic master/slave relationship. In what follows, we will discover how the slave’s position may become more fruitful towards the discovery of objective self-recognition. The movie unfolds as an unnamed protagonist (named Jack in the credits) looks for a way to change his boring life of insomnia; Jack meets Tyler Durden, and they create together an underground club which seeks to complete missions according to Tyler’s desires.
More attention will be made to the relationships in the movie that exhibit the master/slave dialectic for a more enriching experience of entertainment. These relationships are those between Tyler and the Jack, and their sub relationship of Jack and the subordinates of Fight Club. The reason why it’s a sub-relationship is that at the end of the movie, Tyler was Jack’s schizophrenic-alter-ego. In the relationship between Jack and his schizophrenic-alter-ego, Tyler only exists as Jack gives him recognition. Tyler, by receiving recognition from Jack can hold the master position of their relationship.
We can see Jack’s alter-ego as the one who is in control and Jack as the one who submits and obeys to “Tyler.†In the movie, their first confrontation where they fight each other “for fun†may symbolize their “fight to the death†where that relationship of Tyler as master and Jack as a slave is materialized. Through this relationship, the alter-ego Tyler controls Jack’s agency and uses his labor to start the Fight Club franchise through the country. Tyler (through and towards the actual agency of Jack) holds control of his recognition of master by proving that he is the only one who is willing the most to risk his life. Examples may be seen in the movie from the self-mutilation of his hand and the joy of being beaten up by the bar-owner to keep the unground venue.
By doing so, he gains the respect of those who can’t match his fearlessness, and from this respect, they become his subordinates of Fight Club through that recognition. Besides an adoration of the bravery and fearlessness of the leader, the subordinates find meaning in the work that they do. It gives them a sense of agency like no other; they work as they are told with a dissolved sense of desire which allows for a pure recognition of self through their labor, even if that recognition is banal. Now, Jack as the direct “slave†of Tyler eventually begins to recognize his labors as he “turns in†on himself. Towards the end of the film, he begins to realize that it has been he who has been working under “Tyler†in creating all the franchises and missions in the world around him.
He also realizes that Tyler has been his schizophrenic-alter ego but cannot get rid of him no matter how hard he tries. Jack knows and is confident that he wants to live with his self-certainty and not the one that is defiled by Tyler. It leads to Jack willing to risk his life for the death of Tyler Durden, and the only way would be his attempt at suicide, and this is what he does to regain control of his self-certainty. His self-respect is thus won from staking his whole life; the ability to risk one’s life is a legit tender for respect and recognition in not only the master/slave dialectic but also Fight Club. In conclusion, the end of the film is left ambiguous.
Who knows if Tyler will return to? Control Jack? Who is Jack after his dominant alter-ego has deceased? It may thus be fair to suppose that Jack only gets stronger through work and fearlessness; this is the technicality of winning the “fight-to-the-death.†Jack defeated Tyler in the final fight because he worked the hardest and thus his self-certainty held such integrity that it could risk its life to destroy another if it ever came down to it. Also, I would say that, in the movie "Fight Club," we can see us feeling tired of reality and always living under pressure of desire.
As we live our lives, we learn that we need more rationality than emotion to adapt to society. In the movie, Tyler always lives under pressure of desire. He cannot say what he wants to say, but he cannot say what he wants. I wonder if we are the same as Tyler who is living in the world now. References Durham, Meenakshi Gigi, and Douglas M.
Kellner, eds. Media and cultural studies: Keyworks . Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Fincher, D., Milchan, A., Uhls, J., Linson, A., Chaffin, C., Bell, R. G., Pitt, B., ...
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc.,. (2002). Fight club . Giroux, Henry A. "Private Satisfactions and Public Disorders:" Fight Club", Patriarchy, and the Politics of Masculine Violence." jac (2001): 1-31.
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Environmental Scan of Compass Group USAIntroduction
Environmental scanning is a crucial element for organizations, including those within the food service industry like Compass Group USA. As one of the leading providers of food service and support services operating in over 50,000 locations globally (Compass Group Mission & Vision, 2017), understanding the factors influencing both its internal and external environments is vital. The company's success can be attributed to its ability to adapt its strategies based on changes detected during environmental scanning. This paper will explore the external, general, and operating environments affecting Compass Group, utilizing PESTEL analysis as a framework.
Environmental Scanning Strategy
Compass Group employs an environmental scanning strategy that enables it to identify both opportunities and threats in the marketplace (Clayton, 2017). By collecting data on its operations and those of its competitors, the organization can adjust its strategies to remain competitive and profitable. Environmental scanning involves examining various external factors such as market trends, consumer preferences, political conditions, and economic environments, all of which play a pivotal role in strategic decision-making (Root III, 2017).
A fundamental aspect of environmental scanning within Compass Group involves understanding how different governmental regulations affect operations. State and federal laws concerning health and safety standards directly impact the food service industry and can potentially constrain business operations if new compliance requirements arise (Strategic Planning: What Are the Basics of Environmental Scanning, 2012). It is essential for the company to remain responsive to these evolving laws and their implications on profitability.
External Environment Factors
The external environment surrounding Compass Group includes elements that are largely beyond its control but essential to monitor (Root III, 2017). These include market competition, customers, and the wider socioeconomic context.
1. Customers: Understanding customer preferences and behaviors is crucial for Compass Group. As consumer desires change, so too must the offerings and services provided by the organization. Public opinion can significantly influence customer loyalty and brand reputation. For instance, growing awareness around healthy eating and sustainable sourcing has prompted many consumers to favor brands prioritizing these values.
2. Government: Regulations governing health, food safety, environmental standards, and labor laws shape the operational landscape for Compass Group. Compliance with these regulations can incur costs that directly affect profit margins. Therefore, strategic adjustments may be necessary in response to changing regulations to maintain profitability.
3. Economy: Economic conditions, such as fluctuating costs for ingredients, wages, and sunk market costs, directly impact operational strategies. For example, recent supply chain disruptions caused by adverse weather conditions have led to increased prices for key food items, which could force the company to assess pricing strategies to sustain customer satisfaction (Root III, 2017).
4. Competition: Knowing the competitive landscape is vital for Compass Group to maintain its market share. The organization must continuously analyze competitors' strengths, weaknesses, and market positioning to determine opportunities for differentiation (Root III, 2017).
5. Public Opinion: The brand’s public image can significantly affect its profitability. Ethical concerns, corporate social responsibility, and environmental sustainability resonate with consumers today. A negative perception due to a public relations crisis can severely impact sales and customer retention.
General & Operating Environments: PESTEL Analysis
The PESTEL framework allows for a comprehensive analysis of the factors affecting Compass Group’s operating environment. Each factor can bring opportunities and challenges.
1. Political: Government policies on taxation, import/export tariffs, and food safety regulations can impact Compass Group’s operations. Changes in political leadership can result in shifts in regulatory focus that may necessitate adjustments in business strategy (The Elements of the General Environment: PESTEL Analysis, 2017).
2. Economic: Economic health is reflected in GDP growth, employment rates, and disposable income, all of which influence consumer spending behavior (Durham & Kellner, 2012). Fluctuations in these variables require constant evaluation of pricing and service policies.
3. Social: Social trends significantly affect customer preferences. As public attention increasingly shifts towards health and sustainability, Compass Group must develop and modify its menu offerings to meet these consumer expectations.
4. Technological: Advances in technology can offer new efficiencies in operations. Implementing technology, from processing payments to optimizing inventory management, allows efficient service delivery. However, the company must also stay abreast of competitors who may adopt innovative solutions first (Clayton, 2017).
5. Environmental: Environmental concerns, including sustainability and waste management, have become critical in operations. Compass Group must adapt to eco-friendly practices, such as reducing food waste and investing in sustainable sourcing of ingredients, to meet both compliance and consumer preferences (The Elements of the General Environment: PESTEL Analysis, 2017).
6. Legal: Compliance with labor laws, food safety regulations, and employment rights creates legal obligations for Compass Group. Failure to adhere to these laws can result in punitive measures and reputational damage (Strategic Planning: What Are the Basics of Environmental Scanning?, 2012).
Conclusion
In summary, environmental scanning is integral to Compass Group USA's strategic planning and execution. By continuously monitoring external and internal factors that influence its operational environment, the company can adapt its strategies to maintain a competitive edge. The PESTEL analysis reveals the multifaceted challenges and opportunities the organization must address to thrive amid dynamic market conditions. As Compass Group continues to expand, it will be essential to leverage technology and data while fostering a culture of innovation and responsiveness to changing consumer needs.
References
1. Clayton, J. (2017). The Five Stages of the Strategic Management Process.
2. Compass Group Mission & Vision. (2017). Retrieved from [link].
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4. Root III, G. (2017). Five Components of an Organization's External Environment. Retrieved from [link].
5. Strategic Planning: What Are the Basics of Environmental Scanning? (2012). Retrieved from [link].
6. The Elements of the General Environment: PESTEL Analysis. (2017). Retrieved from [link].
7. Who We Are. (2017). Retrieved from [link].
8. Porter, M. E. (1998). Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. The Free Press.
9. Barney, J. B., & Hesterly, W. S. (2015). Strategic Management and Competitive Advantage: Concepts. Pearson.
10. Mintzberg, H., & Waters, J. A. (1985). Of Strategies, Deliberate and Emergent. Strategic Management Journal, 6(3), 257-272.