External environments comprise of two main segments: the general environment and the task environment. The general environment consists of five major elements or forces: technological, economical, legal-political, sociocultural and international (Bartol I. 2008, p.76).The five forces reflect major external trends and conditions whereby organizations ability to alter them directly in the short term, is relatively limited. These five elements have become more sophisticated as the global economic situation constantly evolves. Ultimately all five forces can have an impact on the success of its products and services and will expand on two of these elements.
Firstly, Economical element plays a major part in organizations structure and planning: including production, distribution and consumption. The economical element is partially controlled by the organizations planning however there are also uncontrollable economic factors such as inflation, interest rates and recessions (Bartol I. 2008, p.79). This is proven by the present financial crisis in the US