When is a driver an environmental driver in an ALRA diagram for MBA project works: a note

When is a driver an environmental driver in an ALRA diagram for MBA dissertation project works: a note:

Quite some MBA students learning the agile literature review approach has difficulty to determine whether a particular item belongs to zone 1 (environmental drivers) or other zones. For example, 

[question 1] when the IT Department of ABC Ltd is understaffed, does this management-concern item belongs to zone 1 (environmental drivers) or zone 2 (organizational capabilities)? 

Consider another example, [question 2] when the local banking sector is unwilling to lend money to a private enterprise (called it ABC Ltd), is this management-concern item a zone 1 item or a zone 2 item? 

Before I offer the answers to the two questions, I would like to make some clarification on the topic of "environment" in the systems thinking literature (re: Schoderbek et al. 1985. "Chapter One: The Systems View" Management Systems: conceptual considerations, Business Publications Inc.): The main points from the reference are:

Point 1: "External (and relevant) factors over which the organization has a high degree of control can be considered the resources of the organization";

Point 2: "External (and relevant) factors over which the organization has a relatively low degree of control can be defined as the environment of the organization".

With reference to the 2 main points above, drivers (and factors) that belong to point 2 are environmental drivers (zone 1), while factors that belong to point 1 are zone 2[organizational capabilities]-related.

With this clarification, I now offer the following answers to the 2 questions above:

On question 1, "concerned that the IT Department of ABC Ltd is understaffed" [a management-concern item] belongs to zone 2. Reason: the human resource management function, including staffing, is essentially a factor controllable by ABC Ltd.

On question 2, "concerned that the local banking sector is unwilling to lend money to ABC Ltd" [a management-concern item] belongs to zone 1. Reason: the banking sector's prevailing lending policy is essentially a factor not controllable by ABC Ltd.

Four typical examples of management-concern statements on environmental drivers are:

Example 1: concerned about the increasing intensity of competition in the HK coffee shop market.

Example 2: concerned about the impact of the much tighter supply of experienced nurses in the labour market on the hospital sector.

Example 3: concerned about the impact of fast changing mobile shopping preference of the local Gen Z consumers on the HK retail sector.

Example 4: worried about the impact of the ongoing regional restructuring supply chain landscape on the HK apparel sector.

The last point to make is that "external" environmental drivers can exist at the macro-environmental or micro-environmental levels. A useful discussion on a framework to study at these two levels is my work on the concept of systemic PEST analysis (re: reading 1; reading 2). The only environmental driver that is "internal" (because it can be quite difficult to control by an organization) is organizational culture, e.g. "concerned about the conservative organizational culture of ABC Ltd".