Environmental Scanning

Introduction

Environmental scanning refers to information use and acquisition with regard to organizations relationships, events and trends in its external environment aimed at helping an organizations management in planning the organization’s future activities (Albright, 2004; Aguilar 1967; Choo and Auster, 1993). With regard to public relations, environmental scanning refers to the gathering of information on the reaction and opinion of the public towards the organization. Most organizations engage in environmental scanning because it provides them with a better understanding of external forces of change and aids at identifying emerging issues, drawbacks and situations which enables them came up with strategic measures to change their policies, procedures, services, behavior and products in order to benefit the organization and to adhere to the public’s interest (Cultip et.al, 1987). According to Sutton (1998), environmental scanning is aimed at identification and avoidance of surprises, acquisition of competitive advantage, short-term and long term planning improvement and identification of opportunities and threats (Albright, 2004). To be more specific, environmental scanning is a method used for information identification, translation and collection with reference to external influences into constructive decisions and plans. Most notably, there has been a debate on the strengths of environmental scanning and its specific limitations in relation to public relations (Conerlissen (2007, p.99) opines that environmental scanning helps organizations through “analyzing the organization’s position and identifying emerging issues that may have significant implications for the organization.” However, L’ETang (2008, p.86) opines...

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