Socio-cultural

Social factors have a massive impact upon organisations. The population, gender, age, fashions, leisure pursuits etc - all impact on the way in which organisations look, feel and behave. Some key areas in particular are:

Click on each title to reveal

Population growth rate and age profile

Heard of a population pyramid? A healthy population in a country should have a population mass which looks a bit like a pyramid - lots of young people at the bottom and as you go up the pyramid then there are less people as they get older. However, many western societies have an inverted pyramid - it's up-side down. Not enough young people at the bottom and too many old people at the top. This means that there are not enough young people working and paying taxes to support the old people who are no longer working and require pensions and medical care. Whilst having an aging population opens up certain business opportunities: care homes, Saga holidays, walk-in showers, and stair lifts (to name but a few); it also puts a great strain on the economy.

Related to the issue of population growth and structure is the number of generations that are currently in employment. We now have a society where 4 generations can be working in one organisation. This clip explains who they are:

• mccrindleresearch - Understanding the Global Generations. Youtube (5m, 16s)

Population health, education and social mobility, and attitudes to these

The health of a population is also a big factor. One of the key problems facing many western populations currently is obesity. We are slowly killing ourselves by eating unhealthy foods and not doing enough exercise. This has an impact on economies as obesity causes many chronic illnesses which put a strain on health care and also mean that these people cannot work. Western countries also tend to have large populations concentrated in conurbations - cities...and this brings with it certain positives and negatives: increased pollution and congestion; and also less economic strength to fund more remote and rural areas.

Population employment patterns, job market freedom and attitudes to work

In Japan there has been traditionally a far stronger work ethic than in the UK - where people generally work to live rather than live to work. This has meant that UK productivity levels have remained lower than in quite a few countries and this impacts on overall competitive advantage.

Lifestyle choices and attitudes to these

Until the current recession there was an attitude of 'spending' and often spending beyond our means - through loans and credit. We have a society that tends to view itself in terms of what it owns...in 'things', and that buying more will make us happy. Oliver James refers to this as 'Affluenza' - a 21st century disease which has made us unhappy - it is a spiral whereby we want to consume more because we are unhappy, and then that means we need more money either through work or loans, which makes us more unhappy and we need to consume more again!