Through out the lesson, we talked about STEEPLE, an acronym which refers to the external factors that affect a business. STEEPLE analysis informs a company about their current environment.
Mr.Sen said that a real STEEPLE analysis should be as complete as possible, unlike in classroom and exams where we are limited with questions such as “C
ite 2 examples of the social factors affecting a business.” He stated that even though our exams are like that, it does not mean that we only do “2 examples” in real life, claiming that the quality of our strategy depends on our planning and that planning cannot really be separated from goals.
Then we took the SCHOOL as an example of an organization to discuss its STEEPLE. Since we were all students, it was not hard for us to come with many examples about school. Here are the results of our discussion! :
STEEPLE FACTORS AFFECTING THE
SCHOOL
SOCIAL :
¨ Parents’ backgrounds, their demographic profiles, occupations, ethnic identities and religion
¨ Expectations that parents have about their children; Koc School has a certain reputation; almost every parent has the expectation of his/her kid going to a university after graduating from school
¨ If the school decided to make more scholarships available
¨ If an alumni wanted to donate money to school, then that donation can make a spot available for a student who can not afford this school
¨ Assuming that Turkey changes its lawsuit, saying that people in different religions should study in different school. This regulation would cause and unfortunate social change, affecting the state of the school.
ECONOMIC :
¨ In 2001 economic crisis, people woke up in the morning, and sawthat their assets had turned into 0, this was a traumatic experience for the country.¨ Mr.Sen told us to suppose the dollar goes very weak, and worth less than lira. This means that the lira is strengthening. Moreover, he explained that weakening of the dollar is bad for the exports, therefore, if someone’s ear
ning income is in US dollar, it would not be a beneficial thing for that person. On the other hand, Mr.Sen clarified that if your company has 1 million dollars of loan, it is a good thing since lira worth’s more than the dollar.
After understanding the crisis concept, we started talking about the effect of crisis on the school, Mr.Sen said that it would be major.¨ Since our school buys its equipment, books, and pays in Euros, it has to check the Euro-Lira relationship. If the Euro strengthens, the school would still be getting the same fees, but those fees would cost more and therefore, there would be a squeeze on its resources
· While talking about the political effects on school, Mr.Sen asked us which ideologies affected schools and which did not. He explained that “educations and politics have never been independent”, stating that there are very few countries where education is independent from politics. The school cannot teach anything that is against the politics and current government. In some schools, it is not even allowed to have political discussions.POLITICAL:
LEGAL :
¨ Employees’ working hours, labor conditions
¨ Mr.Sen said that laws are not always written, sometimes laws work simply by courts and judges agreeing that this is how they interpret the law, and we discussed on this for a while. He gave an example and said that in the United States, the cooperation is considered to be having the same legal states as individuals do. You and I are persons but cooperation is also considered as a person, even though you cannot “hit it, shake hands with it or speak to it”. However in law, you can find a suit against it. Then we discussed how it would affect the votes and parties. You and I can vote, and just like us, the cooperation can vote too. Say both me and a cooperation want to contribute to a party and make a donation. The cooperation would pay much more. In law, you, the cooperation and I are all the same, however in practice, we are not the same, our powers are not equal. In practice, “you and I absolutely have no say in what is going on.” Laws don’t tell you what is right or wrong and you do not find all the laws written down somewhere. You have to interpret the law. Mr.Sen informed that in 1896, the law said in the particular case that “this is the judgment, people interpret the judgment to me”. A few months ago, the Supreme Court of The United States said that “cooperations could not contribute to parties in their own names.” But then, they changed the rule. The cooperations could contribute them in their own names. That means that for instance, Chinese companies can buy up American companies, and actually influence the voting process. So where is the democracy then? ----“Right off the window.” Of course it can also happen vice versa.
¨ After deeply discussing about this subject, we stated a point: When you look at the legal environment of the schoool, the law is not only written and does not only depend on the articles.
¨ Students have rights because courts behave in this way saying they do have rights.
¨ Looking at legal factors, a school decides what can or cannot be taught.
¨ There’s a reason why the law is there, but we live in another world, so it does not contribute to the students.
ETHICAL:
¨ Ethics are the unwritten laws of the society and are not equal to law.
¨ While discussing the ethical factors affecting the school, we had a laugh about what Mr.Sen said: “A teacher teaching business and management class, he tells his studens; “You better come and meet me at home and ill give you some help.” That would not be ethical.
¨ Teachers judging and grading students according to whether they like them or not would not be ethical either.
¨ A student bringing fake health reports would be unethical and the school cannot do anything about it.
¨ We also talked about the ethical values which are accepted around the school. For instance, if the parents are considered a lot with God and religion, in school they won’t judge those notions.
¨ Moreover we said that in some cultures, not being interested in teamwork’s, pushing yourself in front of others, and being over-ambitious is considered to be wrong and unethical.
¨ Law fails to reflects ethics sometimes and vice versa.
¨ What is considered to be ethical in the past may not be considered to be etchical now, for instance, in the past, girls couldn’t go to school and it is completely reversed now.
¨ Apart from the school environment, we wanted to discuss ethical values affecting businesses. We discussed whether it was right or wrong for a business to project itself as “green” and environmentally conscious. Mr.Sen said that when companies are responding to the environment changes, they are changing their policies and strategies in order to be in conformity with what the rest of the community work for. For example, one of our previous assignments was about Kellogg’s, by placing its stores near their businesses, Kellogg’s was reducing the carbon footprint and the transportation cost.
We said that being environmentally friendly was a business strategy, since if the businesses’ ethical reputations decline, their image would be harmed, they won’t be “popular” anymore and will begin to slide downwards. Mr.Sen informed that that’s why companies should be image-conscious. If they cannot keep up with the updates and ethical strategies, they will be out of the field by no time.
¨ Then we discussed whether it was hypocritical for a company to adopt green policies not because it’s ethical but because it is good. We decided that whatever the motivation behind it really is, it actually pays to be green and eventually it is profitable.
¨ Mr.Sen stated that there is a major risk if you think too much like a business-person and a great danger in starting business since you start losing sight of business thinking and ethical thinking. If you think in terms of costs&benefits, whether benefits exceed costs or not, this is unethical. But what is good is not always defined as cost or benefit, said Mr.Sen. We cannot always say something is good or bad simply because its beneficial. Sometimes a matter can be good but not beneficially -well, initially-. And finally, we stated something really cliché but still so true: Happiness does not depend on benefice.
Through out this long lesson FULL of new information and new point of views, we discovered STEEPLE. I learned lots of new terms and gained more knowledge about how businesses work and what should they be concerned with.
Here are some other important notes I took during the lesson that are not directly related with STEEPLE.
We discussed about brainwashing and what it was. It was a bad kind of influencing. In schools, we are given certain options. They show things and alternatives – isn’t that brainwashing too?
-Would you want to open a business in Afghanistan? It is very risky. However, the higher the risk, the higher the reward.
-the students forget about the risk business
-In the absence of competition you tend to get very much higher profits.
-More the competition, the lower the profit; unless you are amazing!
-Mr.Sen said that there is a newly developing branch of law called environmental law, and advised us consider that occupation.
-If something becomes common in the external environment, it becomes part of the SWOT. But what is SWOT?
Coming Up!
"Mr.Sen told us to suppose the dollar goes very weak, and worth less than lira." - The dollar going weak doesn't mean that it's worth less than the lira. It means that each dollar is worth fewer lira than before, for instance if it goes from $1 = 1.50 TL to $1 = 1.40 TL.
ReplyDelete"...if your company has 1 million dollars of loan, it [a weakening dollar] is a good thing since lira worth’s more than the dollar." No, it means that what you owe is now worth fewer lira, so for a Turkish company, the debt is now less when expressed in lira, even if the dollar value of the debt is the same.
Corporation (same as company) - not the same as co-operation (= işbirliği).
"If you think in terms of costs&benefits, whether benefits exceed costs or not, this is unethical." - What I said was that Cost-benefit thinking is not ethical thinking, I didn't say that cost-benefit thinking is unethical. Ethical thinking sometimes takes into account costs and benefits, but that is not the only thing involved when judging something to be right or wrong, good or bad.
boy I love STEEPLE factors!
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