The business environment Essay

Submitted By Jay-sho
Words: 1171
Pages: 5

The business environment (p1 & 2)

I will be contrasting two businesses from different sectors providing the differences in ownership and break down of the owners’ liability over debts. Out of the two businesses I will be working on one will be a partnership, which is John Lewis and the second will be a non-profit organisation which is Cancer research UK.

The first business I’m going to work on is John Lewis partnership, which gives ownership to 91,000 people who are permanently employed by John Lewis who also share all the benefits and profits between themselves. When John Spedan Lewis set up this type of partnership it gave every partner involved a voice so the business is run equally, and one of the partners won’t be held liable for another partners mistake.

The main purpose for john Lewis partnership is to satisfy all of their members and leave them happy with their employment by giving an annual bonus to all of its 91,000 employees, which on average is worth 17% of their annual salary. John Lewis is a large organisation that owns 40 stores across the UK (30 department stores and 10 John Lewis at home) and 309 Waitrose supermarkets. All of their employee’s are encouraged to have a shared passion to move the business forward by sharing the reward and the responsibility of ownership of John Lewis.

John Lewis
The stakeholders may influence the purpose of John Lewis partnership, and the stakeholders for John Lewis may include:

Employees & Partners
The partners of John Lewis may influence the purpose of the business because the whole purpose of the business is based around the people employed by John Lewis as they run it and senior partners would make the decisions for the business, so they can easily change the purpose.

Competitors
The competitors that John Lewis is against can change the purpose of the business so for John Lewis to maintain a good market value they need to have competition at bay. So if the competition was taking over a majority of the market John Lewis May have to rethink their structure and purpose to gain their market value.

Suppliers
Suppliers may influence John Lewis’ purpose as the suppliers determine how much of the product is available depending on how much they have of the product, they can also decide to put I higher price on the product if there is a lack of supply. So this may affect John Lewis by pushing them toward taking a different approach on the market.

Government
The government can affect John Lewis by taxing the business and if tax goes up it would mean they have to make priorities to pay the bill for tax which will come out the businesses profits. Laws and Legislation can also restrict the business’ so certain changes in law may mean they can do dealings for certain product or cant ship to certain countries etc. So they may take the attention of John Lewis elsewhere.

Local people
It would be necessary for John Lewis to have a good reputation with the local community so if they decide to expand and open store in other areas they want people to know John Lewis as a reputable business and be welcoming.

Wider communities
Wider communities may influence the purpose of the business, as they are the customers as well as potential customers so if John Lewis wanted to expand further into these wider communities they would be welcomed. If they do decide to expand to these communities it would have been due to a gap in the market with a demand for what they are offering, so they may aim their purpose more towards getting their target market interested and informed.

Customers (community)
The community and customers can influence the purpose of the business for example, if their interests go somewhere else their money would be spent with another company, which would result in John Lewis having to rethink their strategy to get back their loyalty and have completely satisfied customers.

John Lewis is a partnership with a governance system which was set up by John Spedan Lewis to give