Business environment is combination of all external factors which have great impact on the business functions. These factors include customers, competitors, suppliers, government and the social, political, legal and technological factors. The business environment keeps changing and we can’t even predict it. In addition, different business models may be surrounded by different environments.

Business environment can assist the business develop itself in many ways. The first step is to determine the four elements in SWOT diagram: strength, weakness, opportunity, and threats. The strength and weakness can help the business solidified the superiorities of the firms and help the business allocate itself in a reasonable position, while the opportunity and threats may give the business a direction to work towards when confronting the challenges. Then, by communicating with these factors, the business can discover somewhere else, a suitable area that can be expanded for further growth. Furthermore, with the assistance of the environment, the business can establish their own strategies which best fit their functions and also can be competed with the competitors. It contributes the business a better social image if the business shoulders the responsibilities and be sensitive to the environment. Additionally, managers can learn through the environment by gaining new ideas about the current market tendency from the society, and then refresh their knowledge and skills that work on their functions.

(Source provided by download.nos.org

http://download.nos.org/srsec319new/319EL3.pdf)

Business ethics can be rules or standards governing the conduct of a business. Actually, It doesn’t have any certain limitation to a business behavior because it is a moral code that cannot tell what is exactly right or wrong, but the corporations must take the social responsibilities to their stakeholders. For example, the responsibility to the customers are to provide them wih good quality and safe products at reasonable prices. The stakeholders will decide the tension of the ethics, and different stakeholders may have different tensions for the business. More profit or higher wages? Supplier benefits or lower costs? Survival of the business or needs of stakeholders? ….and so on. These are the decisions must be maken by the corporations. If you own a chemistry industry, you probably need to decide whether produce more products or not. The more you produced, the more pollution. So what’s the solutions to overcome the difficulties in business? For business itself, self regulation is necessary. For the entire society, we need to improve the competition and contestability of the markets, form some pressure groups, establish legislation and social & environmental audits. All sections must work together to achieve that.

(source is provided by the website http://www.bized.co.uk )