Environmental scanning and effectiveness in strategic planning

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Date
2004-04
Authors
Che Ishak, Ismila
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Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Environmental Scanning is defined as the systematic collection and monitoring of information that describes changes in the environment in order to identify and assess emerging developments in political, social and technological trends, and events that rnay affect the strategic and tactical objective. of an organization. The effectiveness of strategic planning is directly related to the capacity for the environment scanning. Accurate analysis provides the best framework for maximizing opportunities and allocating resources for the anticipated future. Since the environmental scanning is crucial for the firm, this research is designed to determine the frequency of information scanned and the extent of usage of the information derived from environmental scanning and whether these are related to performance of the firm in terms of the planning effectiveness, sales growth rate and the accuracy of forecasting about the future. It will also test the moderating effect of organization size. The selected firms in this research are SME firms located in Perlis, Kedah, Penang and Perak \Vith the number of full time employees between 10 to 150 people. The results showed that the frequency of information scanned from certain sources helped the firm t'o achieve their strategic plan. On top of that the usage of these information also proved to have positive relationship with the effectiveness of strategic planning. The effect of size as a moderator is found to be not significant.
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Keywords
Environmental Scanning
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