“A company which is a leading global financial services firm providing investment banking, securities and investment management services to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and high-net-worth individuals. Founded in 1869, the firm is headquartered in New York and maintains offices in London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong and other major financial centres around the world” (www2.goldmansachs.com, 2010).
Further, this report it will give recommendations that may help Goldman Sachs to gain competitive edge amongst its rivals in the market.
STEP analysis
STEP analysis is one of the important tools which can be used to scan the external macro environment in which a company is operating. It provides a framework to monitor and evaluate the forces which affect the organization (Morrison, 2006). Further, it helps us to identify risks, which is not under control of an organization. Further, the external influences are categorised under 6 headings; political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental; abbreviated as STEP (Johnson and Scholes, 2005).
Based on the above discussion, STEP analysis has been chosen to analyse the macro-environment to diagnose the external influences that are affecting Goldman Sachs.
Social factors:
Social factors which affected a firm involve the attitudes, beliefs, opinions of a person in the external environment of the firm, as developed from cultural, demographic, educational and ethnics conditioning (Pierce and Robinson, 2005).
Further growing consumer assertiveness is also affecting external environment of the firm.