Blakely
Recent political and economic developments and associated changes within the practice and delivery of health and social care have led managers and professionals to recognise the importance and links between problem solving and decision-making skills. Especially, assessing the impact of political, economic, socio-cultural, environmental and other external influences upon health care policy, proposals and organisational programmes is becoming a recognisable stage of health service strategic development and planning mechanisms. The term PEST has been used regularly within the last 20 years and its true history is difficult to determine. The earliest known regard to tools and techniques for ‘scanning the business environment’ is by Francis J. Aguilar who discusses ‘ETPS’ - a mnemonic for the four sectors of his taxonomy of the environment: Economic, Technical, Political, and Social.
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