In light of 9-11 and other events such as the Iraqi war, how does the environment impact the roles and responsibilities of a manager? The environment includes political, economic, environmental, social, and technological factors. Each of these components of the environment are external but can have an impact on the organization ultimately forcing the manager to make certain decisions. Using the open systems approach to organizations, we can look at several inputs and factors that impact the catastrophic plight of the airlines and it's managers. .
In an open systems approach to management, the relationship between an organization and its environment is extremely important. An organization takes raw materials from the environment and adapts and changes them in an effort to provide a product or service back to the environment. In the example of the airlines, there are several environmental factors that have impacted the drop in bookings, lay off of personnel, and bankruptcy proceedings. Each of these factors can be separated into one or more of the categories of political, economic, environmental, and technological. For example, an economic and environmental factor is the fear of flying and travelling given 9-11 and the war. Consumers can cite both of these worldly events for the drop in airline bookings. Additionally, the decrease is contributing to the loss of profit that drives the ability to pay employees. A political factor is the government's demand for an increase in security but their inability or unwillingness to take responsibility for the bill. This need for additional hiring of personnel forces the airlines to incur another debt that must be absorbed into the organization. A manager must make tough decisions to determine where the income is going to come from to pay these additional salaries. It is quite possible that this extra payroll is created through the increase in airfare or through the termination of other employees within the company.
