Scanning

• entails the study of all segments in the general environment

  scanning
• Although challenging, scanning is critically important to the firms’ efforts to understand trends in the general environment and to predict their implications, especially for companies competing in highly volatile environments.
• Through scanning, firms identify early signals of potential changes in the general environment and detect changes that are already under way.
• Scanning activities must be aligned with the organizational context; a scanning system designed for a volatile environment is inappropriate for a firm in a stable environment.
• Scanning often reveals ambiguous, incomplete, or unconnected data and

  information that require careful analysis.