Components of Socio-cultural Environment, Family Structure and Social Organizations

Components of Socio-Cultural Environment

The term “socio-cultural environment” is a cluster of social factors (beliefs, a level of literacy, standards, and state of society, customs, practices, behaviors, conflict and cohesiveness, etc.) affecting a business. This consists of factors correlated to human relationships and the impact of social attitudes and cultural values on the business of the organization. These social factors determine how individuals and organizations should be interconnected to each other.

Business organizations make strategic analysis where researches are conducted on the environment within which a business operates to achieve organizational goals. Analytic methods are the tools used in the strategic analysis. These tools can be PEST analysis, SWOT analysis Porter's five forces analysis, early warning scans, value chain analysis and war gaming.

The components of the socio-cultural environment are:

1. Economic system
2. Political organization
3. Social structure and
4. Belief system

1. Economic system

Economic System is the means by which the countries and governments distribute resources, services labors and trade goods, capital, entrepreneurs, physical resources and information resources. All economic systems are based on what to produce, how to produce and in what quantities, and who receives the output of production. An economic system includes the way of production, proper allocation of scarce resources, exchange and distribution of goods and services formulated from scarce (limited) resources for fulfilling the needs of humankind. This includes the collections of the various agencies, entities, institutions, patterns of consumption and decision-making processes that comprise the economic structure of a given community.

Planned Economy where the governments choose how the factors of productions are allocated. For example, Government determines who possess the businesses, who make purchases and sells to whom and who makes the final decisions about businesses.

2. Political organization

A political organization is any entity (that which is known to have its own different existence) that is involved in the political process. The political organization includes political institutions, political parties, groups, etc. These organizations are engaged in political activities aimed at achieving clearly defined political goals. That improves political systems and as well as benefits the interests of their members like campaign, labor unions, etc. Such political systems affect the business both directly and indirectly.

In market economy or even in planned economy, the government holds control of shaping the business activates of a country. The main objectives or goal of any businesses is to make profit and governments’ goal is to ensure economic stability and growth. Both of them are different but very co-dependent.

3. Social structure

Social Structures refers to the pattern of social relationships (such as those between teachers and students, parents and children, employers and employees) regulated through recognized norms and shared values in a society. Such structure regulates mutual actions among members of the society, providing guidelines within the cultural norms for achieving the goals defined by cultural values. However, when the social structure and the societal values become inharmonious, the structure must comprehend the social change in order to allow the society to survive and continue healthy development.

A social structure includes age, sex, kinship, status, associations, etc. Society is continually changing. Tastes and fashions are the great examples of this change. Younger generations to use digital technology to shop online whereas older people will perhaps stick to their traditional methods. These types of changes in social factors can slam the business organizations in different ways. You might need to study the factors in details to understand the impacts better. Most companies examine the population growth and age structure. This also shows interest in lifestyle and consumer attitudes changes.

4. Belief system

A belief system is a set of principles that helps us to understand our everyday reality. Also, it is the state of mind in which a person thinks something is the case, with or without there being empirical evidence (sense experience) to prove that something is the case with actual assurance. Beliefs are the assumptions we make about others and about ourselves in the world and about how we expect things to be like. Beliefs are all about what we think is really true, how we think things really are and what therefore believe as a likely phenomenon that will follow from our behavior. This could be in the form of political affiliation, religion, spirituality or philosophy among many other things. Our knowledge on certain things or topic depends on the way we were grown up, and even peer pressure from others can help to realize and even make change our belief systems. The strong belief that comes from these systems is a way for us to make sense of the world around us and to define our role within it.

Our beliefs and assumptions play a huge part in the way we make decisions. The problems we sometimes encounter with lighting, composition, subject placement and other technical factors may be a direct result of us trying too hard to hinder with our natural creative processes when we should probably assimilate to trust our instincts more than we do. In the event that there is a disconnect between expectation and the final result, then we feel unhappy or unsatisfied with it, we don’t feel right.

Family Structure and Social Organizations

Family Structure

The family is the earliest and the most universal of all social institutions and also known as the most natural, permanent and simplest form of social organization. In every society, individuals are primarily organized into separate families and households. The family structure is considered a family support system involving two married individuals providing care and stability for their biological offspring where father is the primary income earners, whose purpose is to help the family in all ways and divide land equally for sons to inherit whereas mother is the subordinate to men (depending on ethnic group), carry out household chores and take care of their children. The form and features of the family may vary from one place to another and one country to another but the family as a social group exists everywhere. It performs a variety of functions like economic, emotional, educational, biological and cultural.

As Nepal is known as a very diversified homeland of several ethical groups, it has common social family structure. Most of the Hindu caste people hold a high value of having joint family arrangements in which the sons of a household, along with their parents, wives, and their children, live together, sharing common resources and expenses. Within the household, the old ones have full authority over the young, and men over women. Nowadays in the modern societies, most of the families prefer small family, which includes father, mother and their children. Family structure and the changes in it, family values and attitude towards and within the family determines the buying behaviors of the people.

Social Organization

Social Organization is a form of relationships between and among individuals and groups. Characteristics of social organization can include qualities such as sexual composition, size, structure, division of labor, leadership, communication systems, and so on. This is the kinship structure of a society or culture especially as established in a stabilized network of rules of residence and descent. The system of relationships between persons and among groups withhold to the division of activity and the useful arrangement of mutual obligations within society.

According to the Broom and Selznick, “an organization means technical arrangements of parts.” Social organization means social relationships among groups. Individual and groups are interrelated together to create social organization. It is the result of social interaction among the people. It is the web of social relationship in which individuals and groups take part in. All the social institutions are known as the social organization. Associations, clubs, and other formal groups are organizations. Social systems also rely on social organizations. In an organized body; its members coordinate with one another on the basis of their roles and status.The interactions among the members make them into organizations. The model of such interactions is called social organizations. These organizations are formed for the welfare of the people of the society.

References:

Oldfield, Henry Ambrose. Sketches from Nepal, Historical and Descriptive, 1880, 1974.

https://www.cpp.edu/~ddwills/courses/ant102/readings102/Study Guide 2.html

http://www.studylecturenotes.com/basics-of-sociology/what-is-social-organization-meaning-definition-of-social-organization