The three categories are market and economic pressures, societal pressures, and technological pressures. Market and economic pressures include strong competition, global economy, regional trade agreements, extremely low labor costs in some countries, frequent and significant changes in markets, increased power of consumers, and political and government. Societal pressures include changing nature of workforce, government deregulation, compliance, shrinking government subsidies, increased importance of ethical and legal issues, increased societal responsibility of organizations, rapid political changes, and terrorism. Technological pressures include increasing innovations and new technologies, rapid technological obsolescence, increases in information overload, and rapid decline in technology cost versus labor cost.