Environment is a force or a factor within or outside an organization that influences its performance either positively

or negatively. The organization is surrounded by two main environments – internal and external. The internal
environment consists of the firm itself, the owners or shareholders, the employees, internal technology, internal
suppliers and internal financiers. The internal environment is largely controllable and the organization can
manipulate it to its advantage. On the other hand, the external environment mainly consists of the forces beyond
the control of an organization such as the pestel factors. Pestel is an acronym for political, economic, social-
cultural, technological, ecological/environmental and legal environments.

Definition

PESTEL
a) Political factors
This explains the level of government’s involvement in the national economy like Kenya in political, social and
economic matters. Political factors include government policies, political ideologies, political affiliations and
provision of public goods in the economy. Examples may include the tax policy, the labour law, environmental law,
trade restrictions, tariffs and political stability. Political factors also include areas like goods and services bought or
banned by the government. The government is a major buyer of goods and services in the economy to support
sectors like health, education, agriculture and infrastructure among others. Political factors can either be a threat
or an opportunity to an organization.
b) Economic factors
These factors include areas like economic growth, interest rates, exchange rates, inflation rate, the gross national
product, income per capita, employment levels and so on. They significantly affect how organizations operate
either positively or negatively. For example, interest rates affect a firm’s cost of capital and therefore to what
extent a business grows and expands. Exchange rates affect the costs of exporting goods and the supply and price
of imported goods in an economy while inflation affects the cost of the factors of production.
c) Social- cultural factors
These include the cultural aspects of the population for example, health consciousness, population growth rate, age
distribution, career attitudes and emphasis on safety, religion, connotations, tastes and preferences. Changes in
social factors affect the demand for a company’s products and how it operates. For example, changes in tastes and
preferences of people may lead to a loss of a big chunk of the market.
d) Technological factors
The factors above include changes in processes and configurations due to innovation, automation, new inventions,
research and development activities among others. Technological changes can determine barriers to entry,
minimum efficient production level and influence outsourcing decisions. Furthermore, technological shifts can affect
costs, quality, and lead to innovation.
e) Environmental factors
These include weather as well as climate and climate change, which mostly affect industries such as tourism,
agriculture and insurance. This also covers issues like pollution and waste management. Growing awareness to
climate change and environmental issues is affecting how companies operate and the products they offer.
f) Legal factors
Legal factors include issues like consumer law, antitrust law, labour laws, copyrights, health and safety laws and
bylaws. These factors can affect how a company operates, its costs and the demand for its products. The bottom-
line is that the company needs to operate within the laws.
To survive and win in a competitive environment, organizations have to gain competitive advantage over their
competitors and earn a profit .Organizations gain a competitive advantage by continuously improving how they
conduct business in order to thrive and be better than their competitors. To succeed in the environment, the
managers must deliver the following fundamental success drivers: quality, cost effectiveness, speed, innovation,
technology and globalization.

1. Quality
Quality is the excellence of your products and services. Customers’ expectations have increased on the quality of
goods and services they expect to buy from their suppliers. Customers now demand high-quality goods and
services, and often they will accept nothing below their expected quality. For a company to survive in a competitive
environment, it has to produce and supply products of high quality. W. Edwards Deming, and J. M. Juran and other
quality gurus popularised the need for organizations to embrace Total Quality Management (TQM) which
encourages managers to ensure the following are achieved:
1. Preventing defects before they occur;
2. Designing products for quality;
3. Embracing the philosophy of continuous improvement;
4. Ensuring quality is the responsibility of all employees in the organization;
5. Top management should be committed to quality improvement;
6. Managers should thrive to exceed their customers’ expectation in meeting their quality requirement.
Service quality is vital as well. Managers should ensure their customers are given high quality goods and services
to satisfy them and exceed their expectations. Companies can achieve customer satisfaction by listening to the
customers’ description of the quality of goods and services they would like to receive from them. Providing world
class quality requires a thorough understanding of what quality really is through your customers’ expectations.
Quality can be measured in terms of product performance, customer service, reliability, conforming to standards,
durability and aesthetics.

2. Cost effectiveness
Cost effectiveness means that a company’s products and services costs are kept low enough so that you can realize
profits, while pricing your products (goods or services) at levels that are attractive to consumers.

3. Speed
Speed is the fast and timely execution response, and delivery of results. Speed separates winners from losers. How
fast can an organization develop and get a new product to market? How quickly can it respond to customer
requests? An organization is far better off if it is faster than the competition and if it can respond quickly to your
competitors’ actions. Speed is a competitive imperative these days.

4. Innovation
Innovation is the introduction of new goods and services. A firm must adapt to changes in consumer demands and
to competitors. Companies cannot survive in today’s business environment without continuously being innovative.
Innovation adds to a company’s competitive advantage, so it should be a strategic goal and must be managed
properly.

5. Knowledge management
Today’s manager must create a work environment that attracts good people, makes them want to stay and inspires
creative ideas from everyone. The goal is to turn the brain power of their employees into profitable products. These
are practices aimed at discovering and harnessing the organization’s intellectual resources. Intellectual capital is
the collective brainpower or shared knowledge of a workforce that can be used to create value in the organization.
Due to competition, organizations need to combine the employees’ talents to achieve unique and significant results.
A knowledgeable worker is very valuable to organizations today. This is someone whose knowledge is a critical
asset to the organization.
Knowledge management is about finding, unlocking, sharing, and altogether capitalising on the most precious
resources of an organization which are people’s expertise, skills, wisdom and relationships. Knowledgeable
managers find human assets, help people collaborate and learn, help people generate new ideas, and harness
those ideas into successful innovations. Due to the importance of knowledge management, a new career has been
developed and companies are searching for knowledge managers.

6. Technology
Organizations cannot survive in today’s business environment without the support of appropriate technology. For
the purpose of speed, achieving quality standards and getting to be competitive in the market, technology should
be embraced by all businesses. Managers therefore should be informed on the technological innovations so that
they can adapt the new technology where necessary. Technology can be defined as the methods, processes,
systems, and skills used to transform resources into products.

7. Globalization
It is the worldwide interdependence of resource flows, product market and business competition. In a globalised
world, countries and people are increasingly interconnected through the news, in travel and lifestyles, in labour
markets and employment patterns, and in business dealings. Managers need to be enlightened to global realities.
This is because globalisation affects all types of business. Companies are in great pressure to improve their
products and services so as to face the intense competition from foreign companies.

Environment management
Environment analysis may be approached from several ways:
a) From an input – output analysis whereby the major environment aspects are human resources, capital,
managerial and technical factors as inputs. On the other hand, products, services and profits are outputs.
b) Social responsibility and ethics approach: Focuses on the claimants in the environment such as the employees,
consumers, suppliers, trade unions, government and the general public. Each of them will have a claim in the
organization.
c) The external – internal approach to the analysis of environment. It gives the following as components:
• Technological, economic, political – legal
• Social-cultural, historical & geographical
The internal environment component includes mainly the firm’s internal resources, tools, equipment, plants, the
financial resources, the human resources, the technological resources as well as the marketing resources. For
internal environment, the analysis is SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats).
The internal environment provides the organization with strengths (strong brand name, strong financial base,
skilled workforce) and weaknesses (weak management, limited products, weak technology and processes) while
the external environment provides opportunities (merger, new sources of raw materials, withdrawal of a strong
competitor) and threats (entry of a strong competitor, political instability, changes in tastes and preferences
among others). The internal environment is easily controlled by the management while the external one is not
easy. In the analysis of external environment consider the dynamism (how fast is it changing)?

Organizational context
Organisational context refers to the organization with its interactions with the surrounding. Context explains the
circumstances surrounding the organization. It explains what comes before and what comes after. In systems
approach we have:
Since organizational context explains what surrounds the firm, whatever is within the environment of the
organization influences the way it behaves.
There are FOUR contextual dimensions/factors that influence the organization. These are:
1. Environment
2. Strategy
3. Size
4. Technology

1. Environment and design: There is a relationship between organizations

• Mechanistic – Things are more stable and predictable
• Organic – A dynamic environment with a lot of changes.
Mechanistic design which resembles the bureaucratic organization emphasizes on the rules, specialised jobs and
centralised authority. In organic designs, rules and regulations are minimal, tasks are done more in groups rather
than individual. Authority is decentralised, members often gather information on their own and figure out what to
do rather than rely on directives from superiors.
Two other British researchers suggested that organizations vary along two dimensions as a result of the
environment. These are differentiation and integration. Differentiation describes the extent to which the
organization is broken down into departments that differ by managers, orientations and structures e.g. Unilever
Kenya, an organization which has many departments has a high level of differentiation while one with few
departments has a low level of differentiation.
Integration is the degree of collaboration that exists among departments e.g. EABL. High integration occurs when
managers must coordinate their activities with other departments. Low integration occurs when departments can
operate autonomously and therefore coordination between departments is not required.
Generally, a complex and rapidly changing environment increases the need for differentiation and integration of an
organization. A complex environment requires that managers create highly specialised departments to develop
expertise and handle the demand of uncertainty due to environmental changes. Increased integration is necessary
as frequent changes require greater information processing and adjustments within and across departments.
Managers of an organization in a stable environment should develop structures that are mechanistic in order to be
effective. If the environment is unstable, managers should adopt an organic design for their organization.
Managers however need to recognise that the environment varies by complexity. When the environment is highly
complex, an organization should be differentiated with each department developing structures that are best to suit
it to the part of environment it deals with. Integration is necessary when the departments must work together and
when the environment is unstable.
2. Strategy and design: A strategy is a general plan of action which shows how a company can mobilise resources
and how it is to deploy them to achieve an objective. Structure follows strategy. Structure is the means by which
strategy is implemented. Therefore, organization strategy is closely related to the company’s environment and this
relationship influences the structure of the firm.
Organization Aim Operate in an environment Strategy Structure
3. Size and organization: The size of an organization influences the way it affects the environment. The more
complex and the bigger the organization, the greater the influence will be on the environment. The size of an
organization can be measured in a variety of ways for example market share, total revenue, number of employees,
total capital investment and scope of operations.
4. Technology and design: Technology is a conversion process that transforms organizational inputs into finished
output or products. Technology is not merely machinery but also includes knowledge, tools techniques and actions
that are necessary to complete the transformation process. It has been found in practice that technology affects
management practices and styles, manufacturing processes, size of the firm, economic performance and structure.
The more complex the technology, the more complicated is the management style.

Systems approach to organizations

Organizations are viewed as systems. A system is a group of things or parts working together in a regular
relationship. This relationship can be regular interaction and interdependence. Systems approach to organization is
based on the assumptions and ideas of an Australian Biologist Ludwig Von Bertalanffy (1951). In the theory of
systems, there are two types of systems; closed and open.

A closed system
Closed systems supply its own inputs and must consume its own output. It is difficult for such systems to exist in
nature. Monasteries in remote mountainous areas come close to these systems.

An open system
Feedback loop
All organizations are open systems i.e. they actively interact with their environment. They receive both demand
and inputs from the environment. They process the raw materials into finished goods/services and they export the
same into the environment. The external environment is composed of the government, labour organizations,
consumers, suppliers and the general public. A system is composed of sub-systems. These sub-systems can be the
input systems, transformation systems and the output systems.The term product is a generic label for the product
of a productive system. It can be a good or a service. Goods are defined as movable personal property such as
cars, computers, and desks. Capital goods are immovable personal property such as land, buildings, and factories
and so on. A service is an activity required by a customer or work done for another person.

Characteristics of an open system

1. They receive inputs from the environment in form of labour, capital, raw materials, water or even air.
2. All open systems have a transformation process called production function. This is the process by which the
inputs are transformed into finished products and services. The transformation process is affected by the external
environment. These include the weather conditions, government regulations, equipment breakdown or natural
disasters as earthquakes, hurricanes and landslides.
3. Interrelationships of subsystems. All natural as well as man-made systems are inter related, otherwise they
would not exist. Our universe, the galaxies, the solar system, the world, the country, the city, the organization and
individuals are all part of a system.
Nothing is independent in nature. An organization (like a company) is composed of departments and divisions
which are all interrelated. Von Bertalanffy emphasized that the survival or failure of the system is dependent on the
interrelationships of the subsystems and their contribution to the overall purpose of the system. Therefore,
activities in a production department of a company will be determined largely by the sales department which
depends on budget allocation from accounts department which in turn depends on other departments.

Dr. Kellen Kiambati holds a PhD in business administration with a focus on strategic management from JKUAT and
an MBA from KEMU. She is a certified business associate (CBPA) and a member of the Institute of Human Resource
Management of Kenya. She is also the author of business Research Methods and can be reached on
kellenkiambati@gmail.com

The following points highlight the seven factors that determine internal
environment of a business firm.
The factors are: (1) Value System, (2) Mission and Objectives, (3) Organisation Structure, (4)
Corporate Culture and Style of Functioning of Top Management, (5) Quality of Human
Resources, (6) Labour Unions, and (7) Physical Resources and Technological Capabilities.

Internal Environment of a Business

Factor 1# Value System:
The value system of an organisation means the ethical beliefs that guide the organisation in
achieving its mission and objective. The value system of a business organisation also determines
its behaviour towards its employees, customers and society at large. The value system of the
promoters of a business firm has an important bearing on the choice of business and the adop-
tion of business policies and practices. Due to its value system a business firm may refuse to
produce or distribute liquor for it may think morally wrong to promote the consumption of
liquor.

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The value system of a business organisation makes an important contribution to its success and
its prestige in the world of business. For instance, the value system of J.R.D. Tata, the founder of
Tata group of industries, was its self-imposed moral obligation to adopt morally just and fair
business policies and practices which promote the interests of consumers, employees,
shareholders and society at large. This value system of J.R.D. Tata was voluntarily incorporated
in the articles of association of TISCO, a premier Tata company.

Infosys Technologies which won the first national corporate governance award in 1999
attributes its success to its high value system which guides its corporate culture. To quote one of
its reports, “our corporate culture is to achieve our objectives in environment of fairness,
honesty, transparency and courtesy towards our customers, employees, vendors and society at
large” Thus value system of a business firm has an important bearing on its corporate culture
and determines its behaviour towards its employees, shareholders and society as a whole.

Factor 2# Mission and Objectives:

The objective of all firms is assumed to be maximization of long-run profits. But mission is
different from this narrow objective of profit maximization. Mission is defined as the overall
purpose or reason for its existence which guides and influences its business decision and
economic activities.

The-choice of a business domain, direction of its development, choice of a business strategy and
policies are all guided by the overall mission of the company. For example, “to become a world-
class company and to achieve global dominance has been the mission of ‘Reliance Industries of
India’. Similarly “to become a research based international pharma company” has been stated as
mission of Ranbaxy Laboratories of India.

Factor 3# Organisation Structure:

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Organisation structure means such things as composition of board of directors, the number of
independent directors, the extent of professional management and share -holding pattern. The
nature of organisational structure has a significant influence over decision making process in an
organisation. An efficient working of a business organisation requires that its organisation
structure should be conducive to quick decision making. Delays in decision making can cost a
good deal to a business firm.

The board of directors is the highest decision making body in a business organisation. It takes
general policy decisions regarding direction of growth of business of the firm and supervises its
overall functioning. Therefore, the managerial capability of the board of directors is of crucial
importance for the functioning of a business firm and for achievement of its overall mission and
objectives.
For efficient and transparent working of the board of directors in India it has been suggested
that the number of independent directors be increased. Many private corporate firms in India
are managed by family members of their promoters which is not conducive to the efficient
working of these firms.

It is therefore highly desirable to increase the extent of professional management of private

corporate companies. The share holding pattern has also an important implication for business
management. In some Indian companies the majority of shares is held by the promoters of the
company themselves.

In some others share-holding pattern is quite diversified among the public. In India financial
institutions such as UTI, LIC, GIC, IDBI, IFC etc. have large share holdings in prominent Indian
corporate companies and the nominees of these financial institutions play a critical role in
making major business policy decisions of these corporate companies.

Technically, shareholders elect directors who make up the board of directors. The directors then
appoint company’s top managers who take various business decisions. However, most of the
shareholders delegate the voting rights to the management or do not attend the general body
meeting.

Thus, most of the shareholders regard ownership of the company as a purely financial
investment. However, in recent years in developed countries like the United States the
shareholders have come to wield a great influence.
The bankruptcy of business giants such as Enron, World Com. in the United States have created
great awareness as well as mistrust among shareholders. In the last few years there has been
frequent law suits filed by shareholders against directors and managers for ignoring the
interests of shareholders or in fact cheating them by not declaring dividends. That is why there
is worldwide debate on proper corporate governance of business firms.

Factor 4# Corporate Culture and Style of Functioning of Top Management:

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Corporate culture and style of functioning of top managers is important factor for determining
the internal environment of a company. Corporate culture is generally considered as either
closed and threatening or open and participatory.

In a closed and threatening type of corporate culture the business decisions are taken by top-
level managers, while middle level and work-level managers have no say in business decision
making. There is lack of trust and confidence in subordinate officials of the company and secrecy
pervades throughout in the organisation. As a result, among lower level managers and workers
there is no sense of belongingness to the company.

On the contrary, in an open and participatory culture, business decisions are taken at lower
levels of management, and top management has a high degree of trust and confidence in the
subordinates. Free communication between the top level management and lower-level managers
is the rule in this open and participatory type of corporate culture. In this open and participatory
system the participation of workers in managerial tasks is encouraged.

Closely related to corporate culture is the style of functioning of top management. Some top
managers believe in just giving orders and want them to be strictly followed without holding
consultations with lower level managers. This style of functioning is not conducive to the
adaptability and flexibility in dealing with the changing external environment of business.

Factor 5# Quality of Human Resources:

Quality of employees (i.e. human resources) of a firm is an important factor of internal
environment of a firm. The success of a business organisation depends to a great extent on the
skills, capabilities, attitudes and commitment of its employees. Employees differ with regard to
these characteristics.
It is difficult for the top management to deal directly with all the employees of the business firm.
Therefore, for efficient management of human resources, employees are divided into different
groups. The manager may pay little attention to the technical details of the job done by a group
and encourage group cooperation in the interests of a company. Due to the importance of
human resources for the success of a company these days there is a special course for managers
how to select and manage efficiently human resources of a company.

Factor 6# Labour Unions:

Labour unions are other factor determining internal environment of a firm. Unions collectively
bargain with top managers regarding wages, working conditions of different categories of
employees. Smooth working of a business organisation requires that there should be good
relations between management and labour union.

Each side must implement the terms of agreement reached. Sometimes, a business organisation
requires restructuring and modernisation. In this regard, the terms and conditions reached with
the labour union must be implemented in both letter and spirit if cooperation of workers is to be
ensured for the reconstruction and modernisation of business.

Factor 7# Physical Resources and Technological Capabilities:

Physical resources such as plant and equipment, and technological capabilities of a firm
determine its competitive strength which is an important factor determining its efficiency and
unit cost of production. R and D capabilities of a company determine its ability to introduce
innovations which enhance productivity of workers.

It is however important to note that rapid technological progress, especially unprecedented

growth of information technology in recent years has increased the relative importance of
‘intellectual capital and human resources as compared to physical resources of a company. The
growth of Bill Gates Microsoft Company and Murthy’s Infosys Technologies is mostly due to the
quality of human resources and intellectual capital than to any superior physical resources.

A few years ago, my son graduated college and asked me to

back him financially so he could launch a business. What business? I asked. New type of tanning
salon, said he. So, you got a business plan?

Whereupon my son looked at me like I’d just stepped off a

ship from the Old Country. “Dad,”
he explained carefully, “it’s not that complicated. I mean, you
launched a business, and you were
successful, right?” (Like, how
hard could it be?) He was
referring to Peppers
& Rogers Group, the management consulting firm which had by then grown
to employ more than 100 people. Martha
Rogers and I founded it after our first
book.

I replied yes, but did he know how many other new businesses
I had actually started or tried to get funding for, at one time or
another? No? Six. “What happened to them?” he asked, trying to take this
in. I failed every time, that’s
what. A group legal services firm,
an all-first-class airline, a fax-based media company, a real estate investment
operation, a marketing consulting business…down in flames, each of them. But Martha’s and my
business had succeeded,
and we’ve remained partners and co-authors ever since. Our ninth book together, Extreme Trust, is
due out in a month,
and Peppers & Rogers Group now operates on five continents.

So what really separates success and failure in business? Everyone has a different explanation,
but in the end a great deal of life boils down simply to being in the right
place at the right time. Energy,
determination, intelligence, vision–all this helps, and of course the
more times you get up to bat the more chances you have to make a hit. In the end, however, things
either come
together or they don’t, and in retrospect you can usually point to several
different junctures where your venture might have taken a completely different
turn.

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––
Today, however, randomness and uncertainty play even greater
roles in determining business success, largely because of the increasing
importance of rapidly evolving social networks, and the inherent
unpredictability of social sentiment. Social influence cascades in random ways, often very
rapidly. Predictions and forecasts are pretty
much useless.

Researchers for The

Wall Street Journal once analyzed
25,000 user contributions at six large sharing-and-collaboration websites.
What they found in each network was that a very small number of participants
commanded extremely high levels of influence. Of Netscape’s million-plus users
at the time, for instance, 13 percent of the postings rated “most popular” came
from a single one. And of the 900,000 users of Digg, a third of the
contributions rated highly enough to make it to the home page came from just
30. The newspaper’s researchers then decided to track down one of Reddit’s most
widely read users, a blogger named Adam Fuhrer, in order to figure out why his
opinions on software and legal issues had been so widely praised by other
users. What they found was that Adam was 12 years old, and lived with his
parents in Toronto.

Now doubtless Adam was a very smart young man, but out of
400,000 Reddit users, there had to be hundreds even smarter than this
12-year-old. What probably
happened was that one or two posts Adam wrote early on were rated high by
another Reddit user, and because this user had high ratings himself, other Reddit
members read Adam’s post and rated it high, and so forth. Adam’s reputation cascaded because of
this positive feedback loop.

But here’s the thing: If we wanted to predict the next Adam

Fuhrer–that’s a completely impossible task. It would be like trying to predict what
time it will start raining in downtown Dubuque on May 12, 2029. Predicting the future behavior of
networks
and other complex systems generating things like the weather and social
sentiment is what scientists call an uncomputable problem, and they don’t
just mean that we lack the computing power to do it with our current technology;
they mean there isn’t enough computing power in the universe to solve the
problem.

But knowing that technological progress, networks, and

complex systems are making the business world less and less predictable is a
prediction itself, right? You can
actually plan on it. So here are
six strategies that can help your business deal with increasing levels of
uncertainty:

1. Use
analytic techniques that don’t require high accuracy.

Simple statistical models are often more reliable for

dealing with highly complex situations than more detailed models. This is
especially good advice for marketers, who may be used to seeing awareness and
preference data with two or more decimal places. The problem in dealing with
social networks and other complex systems is that a sophisticated model is more
likely to fit past data well but fail to predict the future, while a more basic
model is less likely to fit past data, but more
likely to be able to anticipate different future scenarios. Multi-variant
trade-off analysis may predict demand for your product quite accurately, but
then over one weekend the mommy
bloggers suddenly take offense…

2. Prepare
for multiple outcomes.

Rather than trying to make the one right guess as to what

will most likely happen, make multiple guesses. Place many small
bets on a variety of options. This is the way any truly innovative process works, and
innovation is a good analogy for prediction. Don’t bet the farm on the Edsel,
in other words, without also having a Mustang or Thunderbird in your portfolio.

3. Find
and rely on the predictable elements of the situation.

You may not be able to predict who the next Adam Fuhrer will
be for any particular social network, but you know there will
be a few participants with extremely high influence, and there will be cascades of sentiment,
sometimes sudden. Just because you don’t know which
particular day it’s going to rain doesn’t mean you should sell the umbrella.

4. Focus
your evaluation of initiatives on the inputs, not just the outputs.

Randomness will confound even the best efforts to produce

results, so when assessing an initiative’s success, consider the quality of the
decision to undertake it. Don’t rely solely on the actual outcome of the
project (bad or good), but take into
account the quality of the process that
went into its planning and execution. A bad leader can sometimes get elected
despite the evidence, but as long as the election was fair, you shouldn’t throw
out the democratic process.

5. Remain
agile, and strive to respond quickly.

There’s no substitute for awareness, listening, and detecting

events as soon as they happen. Focus on “sense and respond” as an organization,
and empower your people to act quickly and decisively. Have a social media policy strong on principle
but general enough to be flexible,
remembering that actual results can vary. And stage a social-media fire drill
every so often.

6. Cultivate
your reputation for extreme
trust.

In the end, you have to prepare for failure, success, and

everything in between. But as long as others find you
trustable, you’ll never be on your own. Focus on doing
the right thing, and your customers, employees, and other stakeholders
will all have an interest in seeing your company weather whatever unpredictable
storm might come your way.

By the way, my son now has a promising sales career with Interactive
Brokers–a well-deserved success he earned entirely on his own. (He’s afflicted with the
entrepreneurial bug, though, and sooner or later I’m thinking he’ll probably have
to run with it, as I had to.)