Environmental scanning
Environmental scanningFor a company to gain or maintain a sustainable competitive advantage, it must be ever vigilant, watching for changes in the business environment. It must also be agile enough to alter its strategies and plans when the need arises.
Methods
There are three ways of scanning the business environment:
- Ad-hoc scanning - Short term, infrequent examinations usually initiated by a crisis
- Regular scanning - Studies done on a regular schedule (say, once a year)
- Continuous scanning - (also called continuous learning) - continuous structured data collection and processing on a broad range of environmental factors
Most commentators feel that in today's turbulent business environment the best scanning method is continuous scanning. This allows the firm to act quickly, take advantage of opportunities before competitors do, and respond to environmental threats before significant damage is done.
The Learning Organization
Once information is obtained, it must be disseminated throughout the company, to all departments, and at all levels. There is resistance to this outlook because many employees feel that knowledge is power and sharing knowledge will reduce one's worth to the company. Further, all people in the company should share in the task of scanning. When all employees scan some part of the environment, and all information, so obtained, gets disseminated through out the organization, the company is said to be a learning organization.
posted by TBlog @ 12:11 PM
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