10 Beyond the organisation
Having explored what might be in the organisation when understood as a system, our attention now turns to what is beyond the organisation. The phrase ‘beyond the organisation’ has an air of cosmic finality, which fans of science fiction might recognise. But really all it is doing is drawing attention to what lies outside the organisation. As explained earlier in this free course, the use of environment here refers to the system environment rather than a natural environment. The system environment is what influences the system, but is outside it. Understanding a system’s environment gives us some clues as to what and how organisations engage in environmental management.