Macroeconomics: where does it fit in?

Well, where?   What is it for?  What does it do?  How can it help?

All valid questions…..  Let’s explore that a bit.

You may find that this conceptualisation helps.  You can apply it to a nation, and industry, a sector, a region, a destination or indeed an individual business.  I have tried to produce something that in essence shows what we are all trying to do.

Perhaps even Darwin might have taken his thoughts on evolution and mans ‘fit’ and adaptation to the natural environment and applied them to business management…. that’s a thought we might usefully discuss too, but perhaps first I’d better show you the representational model which I called ‘Blending the Business’ because I first used it in connection with management at the business level. It only really struck me later that it could have far wider conceptual application.

Let’s try to look at this at a Macroeconomic level and then some others lower down the scale and see if it ‘works’!

1. The nation state
2. A national industry
3. The region: Alsace
4. A destination: Colmar
5. A business: hotel or tourist attraction

NB.   You may come across elements of this in other models you will find in textbooks like:

• STEEPLE / PESTLE – basically a reformatting of the list of environmental factors shown on the right hand side of my diagramme, with the addition of ‘L’ for Law.  [I have taken law as being largely a reflection of political decision-taking and have subsumed it under this heading].
• SWOT – stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.  The first two ‘belong’ to the left hand side of the diagramme: the internal strengths and weaknesses that a company or industry or destination might have.  The latter two relate to the right hand, external environment, because it is this that produces the threats and opportunities.

In one sense, Macroeconomics is a little like the process of trying to make sense at Industry, National or International level of these issues and the markets’ response to them.