ABSTRACT
In this chapter argued is how the business environment influences the company and its stakeholders. The content is focused on global changes in the business environment generated to a large extent by the transition to the knowledge-based economy and digitalization. It starts with the approach of the changing business environment (the concept, the main category of factors, and the essential trends, the so-called megashifts). There are identified and defined 11 megashifts – increase of environmental complexity; dynamism and volatility; digitalization of social-economic processes; work intellectualization; internationalization of all activities; multiculturalisation of the labor force; nanotechnologisation and biotechnologisation; comprehensive networking in society and the economy; sustainable ecologisation; intensification and diversification of state intervention; development of a powerful, formative education dimension; and multidimensional remodeling of the markets – pointing out the basic characteristics and describing the impact on the company and its stakeholders. The impact of each megashift is structured on organizational inputs, activities, outputs, stakeholders, and management changes. The last part of this chapter presented a short synthesis of the influence of megashifts, grouped into two categories: 11 influences on the company as an entity and five influences on the company stakeholders. These influences could represent challenges, threats, and opportunities for each company, and they should be identified, analyzed, and taken into consideration by its managers.
