Question

"Union Pacific Corporation". Perform an analysis of the social/demographic, technological, economic, evrionmental/geographic, and Political/ legal/ governmental segments to understand the general environment facing Union Pacific. Describe how Union Pacific will be affected by each of these external factors.

Answer 1

Factors affecting Union Pacific

            The Union Pacific is considered to be the world’s largest transportation firm. It has thousands of locomotives in its fleet and has the largest railroad network in the United States. There is the number of external factors which have the influence on the performance of the company. In order to protect the labor from the work overload, unions came into the picture in early decades and this ensured that all the labors are paid fairly. Due to increasing trend of population growth in all over the world, it seems to be a rosy picture for the company as it may expect the increase in demand of its services which is possible due to globalization and industrialization. Improved efficiency, effectiveness and productivity s further boosted by the technological advancements. During its early times, the corporation benefitted by the use of diesel as the main source of fuel and computer to regulate its operations. Recently the company has introduced AC current driven locomotive which has played a significant role in improving the performance. A greater customer satisfaction is accomplished by the further use of technology in freight transportation a is facilitates the customers to track the material.

            During early 1900, there was lo of competition among various transportation service providers and it resulted in lowering of prices and it affected the firm negatively as there was the number of competitors which were offering lower freight rates. In the 1990s, the congestion of railroads was resulted due to increased economic activities and it resulted mainly due to increased requirements of material transportation in different industries.

With the use of fossil fuels, the environment was also affected negatively due to over 100 years of ground contamination with petroleum hydrocarbons, industrial solvents, and metals. This pollution also resulted in underground water pollution.

Due to climate changes and global warming, the issues of climate change become the hot issue to discuss in almost all forums and it was experienced all over the world. Consistent rates of transportation was resulted due to various initiatives taken by the government to control the pollution. The customer base of the corporation is also made up of farmers and thus the price of transportation also had its impact on the food pricing. Due to all these factors, there was no monopoly in the market of transportation which was a reality earlier in the trucking industry. As the government also provided huge subsidies for the transportation through rail road's, thus it also contributed to the success of the firm. All these factors form some of the vital external elements which had their negative or positive impact on the performance of the corporation.