A business organization and its many environments have innumerous interrelationship that at times it becomes difficult to determine exactly where the organization ends and where its environment begins. It is also difficult to determine exactly what the business organisation should do in response to a particular situation in the environment. Strategically, the business organisations should make efforts to exploit the opportunities and avoid the threats.
In this context following are the possible strategic responses of an organisation to its business environment:
(i) Least resistance: Some organisations just manage to survive by way of coping with their changing external environments. They are simple goal-maintaining units. They are very passive in their behaviour and are solely guided by the signals of the external environment. They are not ambitious but are content with taking simple paths of least resistance in their goal-seeking and resource transforming behaviour.
(ii) Proceed with caution: At the next level, are the organisations that take an intelligent interest to adapt with the changing external environment. They seek to monitor the changes in that environment, analyse their impact on their own goals and activities and translate their assessment in terms of specific strategies for survival, stability and strength. This is a sophisticated strategy than to wait for changes to occur and then take corrective-adaptive action.
(iii) Dynamic response: At a still higher sophisticated level, are those organisations that regard the external environmental forces as partially manageable and controllable by their actions. Their feedback systems are highly dynamic and powerful. They not merely recognise and ward off threats; they convert threats into opportunities. They are highly conscious and confident of their own strengths and the weaknesses of their external environmental ‘adversaries’. They generate a contingent set of alternative courses of action to be picked up in tune with the changing environment.