Scanning the International Environment

de Woot Phillipe Heyvaert Hubert Martou Francois , “Strategic Management: An Empirical Study of 168 Belgian Firms,” International Studies of Management and Organization (Fall/Winter 1977/78), p. 50.

The authors' two organizations (Center for Education in International Management (CEI) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Kepner-Tregoe, Inc. in Princeton, New Jersey), cosponsored a research project on environmental surveillance which has provided material for this article. The authors acknowledge and express appreciation for the work of Solomon Norman B. Mr. who carried out the research under their joint supervision.

In the generally technique-oriented literature some recent pieces stand out as having some sensitivity to the character of the human process: Terry P.T. , “Mechanisms for Environmental Scanning,” Long Range Planning (June 1977); Kilmann Ralph H. Ghymn Kyung-Ll , “The MAPS Design Technology: Designing Strategic Intelligence Systems for MNC's,” Columbia Journal of World Business (Summer 1976); Rummel R.J. Heenan David A. , “How Multinationals Analyze Political Risk,” Harvard Business Review (January/February 1978); Segev Eli , “Triggering the Strategic Decision Making Process,” Management Decisions, Vol. 14, No. 5 (1976).

A mail survey of a convenience sample of large multidivision companies, yielding fifty U.S. respondents (25 percent return rate) and fifty European respondents (18 percent return rate), 70 percent of whom were policy-level executives. The rest were headquarters-planning or similar staff managers. Questions focused on environmental scanning practices of the headquarters or group-company level.

Similar low ranking for the social domain was uncovered in the U.S. in a study by Fahey Liam King William R. , “Environmental Scanning for Corporate Planning,” Business Horizons (August 1977); see also “Capitalizing on Social Change,” Business Week, 29 October 1979.

Chandler Alfred D. , Strategy and Structure (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1962), pp. 17, 299–300, 314–315.

This point has been made in experimental work by Huber George P. O'Connell Michael J. Cummings Larry L. , “Perceived Environmental Uncertainty: Effects of Information and Structure,” Academy of Management Journal (December 1975), p. 738.

For a convincing example of the formality of the process for utilizing economic data in a company (IBM) see: Karchere Alvin J. , “Economic Forecasting in International Business,” Columbia Journal of World Business (Winter 1976).

Keegan Warren J. , “Multinational Scanning: A Study of Information Sources Utilized by Headquarters Executives in Multinational Companies,” Administrative Science Quarterly, (September 1974), p. 420.

Leavitt Harold J. , Managerial Psychology (Chicago: University Press, 1972), p. 25ff.

“Boundary spanning” has received much attention lately. See for example: Leifer Richard Huber Geroge P. , “Relations Among Perceived Environmental Uncertainty, Organization Structure and Boundary Spanning,” Administrative Science Quarterly (June 1977); Tuchman Michael L. , “Special Boundary Roles in the Innovation Process,” Administrative Science Quarterly (December 1977); Aldrich Howard Herker Dianne , “Boundary Scanning Roles and Organization Structure,” Academy of Management Review (April 1977).

Anderson Carl R. Paine Frank T. , “Managerial Perceptions and Strategic Behavior,” Academy of Management Journal (December 1975) p. 812.

See, for instance, Ansoff Igor , “Managing Strategic Surprise by Response to Weak Signals,” California Management Review, (Winter 1975), p. 31, Figure 6.

Hill Roy , “The Benefits of an International Advisory Board,” International Management (June 1976), p. 28–31; Kenny Roger M. , “Helpful Guidance from International Advisory Boards,” Harvard Business Review (March/April 1976), pp. 14–19, 156.

See Fahey King , op. cit.; Marks Maurice , “Organizational Adjustment to Uncertainty” Journal of Management Studies, No. 1 (1977); Anderson Carl R. Paine Frank T. , op. cit.

On the debilitating effect of long-range planning on strategic thinking, see Tregoe B.B. Zimmerman J.W. , “Strategic Thinking,” Management Review (February 1979). The impact of structure is traced by Kilmann Ghymn , op. cit.

See Rummel Heenan , op. cit. p. 72, for the story of a major petrochemical company which “daily assesses its overseas markets by examining almost 400 separate variables.” The authors do not report whether this company forecast the oil boycott and price increase in 1973.

For examples of how mission and strategy can be used as both starting point and screen, see Neubauer F. Friedrich Solomon Norman B. , “A Managerial Approach to Environmental Assessment,” Long Range Planning (April 1977); Terry , op. cit.

Smith Sir Leslie , Chairman of BOC International, Ltd., brought his board from London to Washington in the midst of a challenge to the BOC acquisition of AIRCO. He also brought the board to South Africa during the debate about doing business in that part of Africa.

Ansoff , op. cit.