PICMET 2007 Proceedings, 5-9 August, Portland, Oregon - USA © 2007 PICMET
A Framework for Effective Environmental Scanning and Analysis
Cherie Courseault Trumbach1, Greg S. Elofson2
1
University of New Orleans, Dept of Management, New Orleans, LA, USA
2
University of Hawaii, William S. Richardson School of Law, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
Abstract--Areas such as competitive intelligence and
environmental scanning are becoming increasingly more
important business practices, particularly under the intense
competition of the technology industry. However, organizations
are reluctant to search for information which they cannot act on
immediately and are also reluctant to experiment in the absence
of reliable information; conditions leading to organizational
inattention. On the other hand, many organizations are
spending valuable resources either on projects assessed with
insufficient information or on information that they are unable
to internalize. This paper provides a framework, based on
environmental turbulence and organizational flexibility, to aid
organizations in developing the appropriate strategy for
effective environmental scanning and analysis.
I. INTRODUCTION
Radical transformations are taking place in organizations
and markets. These changes are the result of economic,
technological and social pressures and other direct and
indirect forces that challenge current modes of organization
and operation. The notion that an organization’s design and
impacts must be aligned with its external environment is well
accepted [24][26]. After all, strategy is defined in terms of
this alignment [23]. Therefore, an organization must attend to
its external environment. A map of the external environment
is necessary and the location of the organization on that map
must be determined. Environmental scanning and analysis is
a means to provide demand-driven, actionable information on
the external environment. That information should relate to
the company situation and strategy. It should provide a
comprehensive picture of the competitive situation, including
the firm and industry’s position in the life cycle [4][16].
Simon [33] was early to note the shift in attention from mere
collection to action formulation, “...until now information
systems have been seen as a way of providing additional
information, but I think they can now be seen as a way of
increasing attention...not only as a way of delivering
information, but as a way of consuming information...we can
also design organizations so that they are able to consume
more information - so that attention is less of a scarce
resource.” Although many organizations have recently
formed formal units for gathering and analyzing external
information, the problem of attending and learning has
typically been solved by a combination of organizational
slack in the form of continually forming and disbanding
attention groups so that they can investigate the environment
with renewed interest. This has resulted in sporadic levels of
attention and unreliable information on which the
organization must depend.
Without this information, the organization cannot
respond effectively to changes in the environment. Without
845
this information, the organization abandons some degree of
its flexibility - as this flexibility cannot be effectively
employed without information with which to make decisions,
and flexibility cannot be maintained without some cost. To
further exacerbate the problem, an organization will not
search for information when it cannot act on the findings.
Jervis [21] touched on this issue when writing the following:
“The predisposition to perceive a threat varies with the
person’s beliefs about his ability to take effective
counteraction if he perceives the danger...whether they are
vigilant or defensive depends in large part on whether they
think they can act effectively on the undesired information.”
On an organizational scale, this idea suggests that there may
be organizations that because they do not perceive a danger,
are unable to alter their course in an environment that can be
generally characterized as highly turbulent; a condition we
refer to as Catch 23:
An organization won’t examine the environment if it
doesn’t believe it can adapt to it, and it can’t adapt to it
if it doesn’t examine it.
On the flipside, organizations may be forced to act,
spending on projects based on incomplete, inaccurate
information or information which they cannot internalize. We
assert, however, environmental scanning and analysis
activities within the organization, activities that were once ad
hoc and sporadic, can be focused and effective. Thus, the
questions addressed here are as follows: Are there certain
types of information that some businesses should ignore that
may be central to the success of others? How should
organizational flexibility and environmental turbulence affect
an organizations scanning strategy? Are there systems that
can contribute to overcoming the failures of attempts at
organizational attention?
We address these questions throughout the rest of this
paper. First, we provide a description of organizational
attention, followed by a discussion on the causes of poor
attention. Third, we discuss the bases for the environmental
framework: organizational flexibility and environmental
turbulence. And the final element is the presentation of a
four-quadrant framework for environmental scanning based
on the organizational flexibility and environmental
conditions.
II. ORGANIZATIONAL ATTENTION
A. What is it?
Organizations attend to their environments. In scanning
the environment, participants can identify strategic issues as
they seek events, developments, and trends that impact the
 PICMET 2007 Proceedings, 5-9 August, Portland, Oregon - USA © 2007 PICMET
business [24]. As far back as the 1980s companies such as
Frito-Lay, Inc. used information technology to track sales
figures for specific regions on a daily basis1. Marriott Corp.
sends its employees out to try its competitors’ hotels2. AT&T
sought to make data-gathering part of everyone’s job.3 There
are numerous examples of the types of external information
that an organization can seek: market trends, competitor
information, political changes, customer behavior, and
technology information. Wellpoint is developing a data
warehouse integrating data from 20 health plans on 80
million patients to facilitate data exchange with the medical
community [10]. Merck was able to identify a competitors
strategy on an unreleased product, respond to the threat, and
force the competitor to delay the product release by over a
year [34]. The use of the internet has only increased the
amount of information available. The internet is a place
where information such as competitor information can be
gathered, and it is a place where information can be
formulated such as from e-commerce activities. Thus, there
has been a corresponding rise in the use of business
Intelligence tools. A 2006 Gartner study of 1400 CIOs found
that BI was a top priority and the spending on related
technologies would increase on average by 4.8 percent and
an Information Week study showed that 38% of executives
reported that half of their employees would use Business
Intelligence within 2 years [5]. In fact, the situation is now
that t here is so much information that our attention to that
information suffers [8]. As result, though, many companies
have a competitive intelligence staff, attentional
responsibilities vary with the organization [22]. These
organizations often attend only inconsistently in both
frequency and skill. While some similarities in attentional
activities exist across organizations, significant differences
exist between the prescriptions for attention and the
descriptions of attention.
B. The Ideal Attention
As described in the academic literature, the normative
characterization of an organization attending to its
environment is one of controlled, continuous, and
coordinated perceiving. This normative organization would
have a clear purpose [16][28]; comprehensively examine the
market strategy of its competitors [2][16][22][27]; align its
attending activities with its strategy [1][9]; involve all people
in the firm [16]; learn to scan its environments and to
understand it [3][6][7][13]; employ multiple forms of
expertise in diagnoses, or radars [29]; recognize patterns and
early warnings [16] [27][32], process weak signals [2]; and
have continuous monitoring [27]. Interestingly, the empirical
descriptions of organizational attention fall far short of this
mark. For example, the early warning system group is
1
Business Week, July 2, 1990.
2
The Washington Post, “Corporate Gumshoes Spy on Competitors,” March
30, 1986, page f1.
3
The New York Times “Intelligence Experts for Corporations” Sept 27,
1988, pg d23.
846
typically in a non-operating department; most often
sponsored by a top executive and disbanded when that
executive leaves the firm [31]. Clearly, this does not involve
all people in the firm, nor does it allow for continuous
monitoring. Additionally, this discourages both tactical and
operational level attention.
III. CAUSES OF POOR ATTENTION
There are a number of reasons for poor attention by
organizations. The three discussed in this paper are the lack
of fit between the information obtained and the strategic
needs of the organization, a lack of a communication
structure that facilitates the transmission of valuable
information up and down the organizational hierarchy, and
the disconnect between the organization and it’s external
situation. There is so much information available that
organizations may have difficulty determining which
information is relevant. Therefore, either everything is
gathered, the wrong information is gathered, or the
information has no context in which to make it meaningful.
In developing a strategy, the information must provided must
be put into the organization’s external context and must apply
to the organization’s business operations [19][23]. Too often
information is driven by what is available rather than what is
needed. Management is often overloaded with so much
information that they are unable to contextualize and thus,
cannot respond to it. Their interest in the information wanes.
Francis and Herring [16] found companies who had been
surprised by their competitors so often that they no longer
had an interest in Early Warning information.
On the flip side of too much information is an imbalance
in information, caused by lack of communication in the
organization. While the management may be overloaded with
strategic information and the front-line employees may have
access to process information or customer information, the
front-line employees lack strategic information and
management misses the additional information which they
can provide. Organizations must manage the flow of
pertinent information. Consider the executive who is
bombarded with strategic information that doesn’t recognize
that negative information, known by subordinates, is missing.
Information often blocked by mid-level managers. On the
other hand, front-line employees may be unable to discern
important information because they do not have the strategic
context by which to put that information. The executive-level
must be able to send clear messages of strategic themes by
which information is framed. Only then, will employees at all
levels be able to properly utilize information. The flow of
credible, sensible, timely, and relevant information that
follows becomes a competitive strongpoint for the
organization [23].
Finally, inattention may be caused by a disconnect
between the organization and its external situation. A positive
result of environmental scanning arises from the ability to
modify activities at the task level based on an interpretation
of information about the environment with resulting positive
 PICMET 2007 Proceedings, 5-9 August, Portland, Oregon - USA © 2007 PICMET
outcomes for the firm. If there is poor understanding of either
the environment or the link between states of the
environment and appropriate task level activities, then there
will be problems realizing the normative goals of
organizational attention. For example, while flexibility is
rooted in innovation and change; yet, control prefers stability,
order, and predictability. Consider a construction company
which must bid on various government projects. The
company must be able to formulate numerous types of
contractual arrangements that result in less control by the
organization. The firm structure must be sufficiently flexible
to adapt to each new job [18].
This inattention perspective seems to explain many of
the scanning issues:
a) Environmental scanning rarely succeeds at the
corporate-wide level because there is no corporate-wide
agreement on the relationship between environment and
task.
b) Scanning tends to be organized under a few executive-
champions with control of discretionary resources
adequate for limited scanning who have their own
models that link only part of the environment to only
part of the task domain in the organization. The
champion contracts for limited environmental scanning
in an attempt to confirm his/her model and guide task
activity within the range of tasks under his/her control.
c) Many other executives do not contract for scanning
within their area of expertise because they see such
activity as having low marginal value.
d) Unassigned scanning amounts to little because of the
general foggy understanding of the environment, and of
how environment and task are related.
Changing the underlying causes of this problem is best
addressed, then, through increasing the level of knowledge of
the organization in its endeavor to attend to the environment.
While a simplistic view of the nature of the Catch 23 problem
would suggest that increasing the organization’s ability to
respond to a greater number of contingencies would prompt
the organization to better attend to its environment, the
organization’s sense-making abilities would not be any better
than before. Thus, increased flexibility would increase costs
without increasing congruence. Alternatively, increasing an
organization's ability to sense and interpret the environment
would give greater precision to its adaptive moves and result
in a successfully flexible organization that could better find
congruence in its impacts and structure with the turbulent
environment. The question that must be answered, then, is
“How can the organization attain higher levels of knowledge
in attending to the environment?”
While enhancement of performance is common to the
many prescriptions for organizational learning, agreement on
the methods and practices of organizational learning is
largely uncommon. For example, researchers have suggested
that organizations may learn how to attain proper congruence
among organizational characteristics such as strategy,
structure, and technology [6]. They may learn adaptation to
847
their environment, choosing assessment and accommodation
through appropriate organizational design features [14]. They
may “improve actions through better knowledge and
understanding” [15].
IV. THE ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING FRAMEWORK
A. Overview: Mapping Flexibility and Turbulence
The recommendations for environmental scanning and
analysis are based on a four-quadrant framework based on
the degree of organizational flexibility and the degree of
environmental turbulence (Fig. 1). These two concepts
represent the degree to how quickly new information is
required and the organization’s ability to respond to the
information obtained. When the firm’s environmental
scanning and analysis efforts are aligned with its internal
capabilities and the external situation, the efforts will be the
most effective. These ideas are discussed below.
Fig.1. General Environmental Scanning Framework.
B. Organizational Flexibility
Reed and Blunsdon [30] define organizational flexibility
as “an organization’s capacity to adjust its internal structures
and processes in response to changes in the environment. The
firm can either react to the environment or strategically
engage the environment. In order to be effective, an
organization must be flexible, specifically have a positive
attitude toward change and have the ability to manage
multiple projects [18]. Organizations must be able to manage
a sufficient number of projects to respond to new threats, or
even new opportunities, at least to the degree that those
threats and opportunities exist [35]. Flexibility enables the
organization to quickly adapt to changes in the environment
and therefore, gain a competitive advantage [29].
Flexibility can be hampered by organizational culture,
“the set of beliefs and assumptions held relatively commonly
throughout the organization and taken for granted by its
members [35]. Flexibility can also be hampered by its own
Information Systems. While Information systems are a strong
factor in enabling flexibility an insufficiently mature
information system or inflexible system can actually result in
organizational inflexibility. A flexible system enables the
organization to adapt to the external environment. Also the
flexible flow of information promotes creativity by bringing
in new ideas from outside sources and can increase
organizational effectiveness. A flexible information system
 PICMET 2007 Proceedings, 5-9 August, Portland, Oregon - USA © 2007 PICMET
facilitates a continuous exchange of inputs and outputs with
the external environment. Adaptable information systems
result in increased organizational experience and learning, as
well as force the organization to modify its behavior [29].
While the organization must have a degree of flexibility, it is
possible to have too much. The degree of flexibility should
match the environment, if flexible reaches beyond with the
environmental situation warrants then the result can be chaos.
Organizations must balance between change and preservation
[35].
C. Environmental Turbulence
A number of researchers have considered issues of
environmental turbulence. Nahm [26] offers a model in
which the external environment has 4 sub-divisions: market
internationalization, the driving force for manufacturing,
length of the product life cycle, and number of customer
requirements. Each of these sub-dimensions can be classified
as turbulent or stable. An organization in a more turbulent
environment is more difficult to manage. However, many
industries are facing extremely turbulent environments. In
alignment with Nahm, Djelic and Ainamo [12] note the
effects of globalization, acute competition, the information
technology revolution, and increasing customer
sophistication as drivers of radical changes in the
environment.
Not all industries,, however, are hyper-turbulent.
Burkhart [4] suggests that knowledge of the stage of the firm
or industry in the products life cycle is important for
assessing the competitive environment. Particular industries
and even individual elements of the business have their own
life cycle speeds. The computer industry, of course, would be
an example of a turbulent industry, with product life cycles
ranging from a few months to a few years, as are a wide
range of “fad” products. However, the furniture, automobile,
and airline industry are all given as examples of stable
industries with long maturity stages in their life cycle.
b) Catch-Up:
D. Environmental Scanning Framework by Quadrant
These considerations lead me to propose the following
environmental scanning framework (Fig. 2). It receives
detailed discussion in the sections that follow.
Fig. 2. Environmental Scanning Framework Quadrants.
a) Consume and Organize: Organizational Flexibility is
High- Environmental Turbulence is High: This situation
848
reflects a firm that is in a turbulent environment and that
firm is readily able to respond to information provided.
For such firms, environmental scanning and effective
analysis are critical. This firm needs the right information
for both survival and competitive advantage at the same
time. There are wide range of possibilities for information
gathering and formulation for this firm. Most of the
literature on information gathering and analysis is geared
toward firms in this situation. For these firms, the primary
factors in their scanning efforts include considerations of
the business objectives, organizing extensive amounts of
outside information, and ensuring the right information is
communicated succinctly to the right people. This
organization should consider the factors that influence the
firm and their innovation direction such as regulations,
enabling technologies, functionally related technologies,
and the competition. These areas are all defensive
methods of scanning. This organization also has the
ability to scan for offensive capabilities such as using
technology mining to identify early stage research which
can be acquired for its own product development. This
type of scanning can be incorporated into a program for
Accelerated Radical Innovation (ARI). In the high
turbulence environment, rapid development and the
ability to quickly understand and respond to market
changes are requirements for success. ARI is “an
information enabled methodology for accelerating the
sequential phases of discovery, commercialization, and
diffusion.” This organization is in the best position to use
environmental scanning to affect its environment.
Scanning efforts can link to Activity-Based
Roadmapping, which is the development of a long range
business model based on an assortment of external
information needs including where new opportunities are
present, where challenges may arise, information on
needed core technologies, and scientific and engineering
research [11].
Organizational Flexibility is Low-
Environmental Turbulence is High: These organizations
are in desperate need of external information for a number
of reasons. First, their environment requires more efficient
and more effective decision-making. In such an
environment organizational flexibility is required in order
to compete. Secondly, they require the type of
information that can improve their flexibility. First and
foremost, this firm must determine the cause of their
organizational flexibility. Inflexibility may be due to poor
communication, inflexible information systems, or lack of
the appropriate knowledge. The determined causes should
be the driver behind environmental scanning efforts. The
goal of this organization is to improve its flexibility.
There is no point in obtaining significant information
geared toward external decision-making until flexibility
can be proved. The organization would simply not be able
to act on it.
If an organization has poor communication, the company
should seek external information and package it in a
 PICMET 2007 Proceedings, 5-9 August, Portland, Oregon - USA © 2007 PICMET
manner that can provide basic business knowledge to
front-line employees. If employees do not have the
business context in which to put the external information
to which they are exposed daily, then that information is
irrelevant. The business strategy and business information
should become part of the organization’s efforts. The
organization must also analyze and disperse front-line
information to the higher levels of the hierarchy. This
organization’s problem may not be one of scanning but of
analysis and of having the appropriate processes in place
to ensure that all levels of the organization have access to
the needed information. It is important that the
communication issue is dealt with at all levels. According
to Volberda [35] if management improves its flexibility
and the organization as a whole does not follow, chaos
will result, as the organization is unable to respond to
frequent changes made by management. However, if that
business context information enables the front-line
employees to respond to the environment, yet
management does not have all the information that it
needs to make decisions, the firm will remain inert.
If the organization is plagued with inflexible information
systems, the environmental scanning and analysis efforts
should focus on identifying support technologies that will
provide long-term flexibility to the organization.
Palanisamy [29] identifies for IS enablers that create
organizational flexibility: IS flexibility, IS enablement of
organizational change, IS enablement for organizational
learning, IS maturity. The organization should scan for
advanced technologies that will allow the organization to
integrate with future system developments, that are
modular for increased flexibility, and that can be modified
to support changes in the organization. Changes to data
management may enable greater flexibility. The simple
act of implementing more flexible systems may enable
organizational change. The systems should also enable
organizational learning in that the organization can at the
appropriate level, use the information to improve
processes, understand the customer and market. The
information should be provided in a form from which the
organization is able to learn. The more that the
organization can learn, the more absorptive capacity the
organization has in order to respond to additional outside
information.
If the organizational inflexibility is due to lack of
knowledge, then the organization should take a short-term
and long-term approach. While communication and
information have immediate possibilities for action,
obtaining knowledge takes time. However, an
organization has two short-term possibilities that must be
supplemented with long-term solutions. The firm can
form alliances. If the firm has developed core
competencies that need to be supplemented in order for it
to compete, the company can continue to do so while still
having access to additional resources. Additionally,
contract employees may allow for increased short-term
flexibility. However, in order to maintain and strengthen
849
that flexibility, the firm must hire multi-skilled personnel.
Additionally, the organization should look to ensure that
the mechanisms are in place to improve the learning and
flexibility of existing employees in the prior paragraphs.
c) Protect Market: Organizational Flexibility is Low-
Environmental Turbulence is Low: In a market deemed
stable, this firm is in an environment near the end of the
growth stage. Product innovation is less radical and
improving efficiency for economies of scale result in an
increase of process innovations. Since this organization
has a low organizational flexibility, the incremental
innovations that are a part of this type of environment are
more likely to come from internal rather than external
sources. Intelligence gathering should focus developing
core competences and on maintaining market share [4].
External searches on incremental innovations that are
consistent with their existing knowledge will most benefit
organizations in this quadrant. However, this firm has lost
flexibility in its productivity gains. It runs the risk of
missing the turn of market events that lead to greater
turbulence. Hall [17] states that many industries in the
1960s were stable and by the 1980s were turbulent. The
fashion industry is an example of such an industry
environmental change [12]. Companies that were more
flexible were the companies deemed the winners. In this
situation, the organization should at least passively scan
the environment for indicators that the market is
becoming more turbulent. Globalized markets and market
saturation are two factors that would lead to market
change. This organization should also scan for substitute
products being developed that could render its products as
obsolete. This organization fits with its existing
environment but must also prepare for change.
Fortunately, for this organization, preparation for change
is not immediately necessary and the organization can
take a more methodical approach to developing new
capabilities.
d) Change Market: Organizational Flexibility is High-
Environmental Turbulence is Low: Although it may seem
like an advantage for an organization to have a high
flexibility in a low turbulence environment, there is the
possibility for hyperflexibility. There must be a balance
between flexibility and stability in the organization [25].
Volberda [35] provides a significant amount of insight
into the challenges and opportunities for such an
organization. This organization is more likely to overreact
or react to quickly for the environment, which can result
in chaos. Additionally, there is a cost to obtaining
information and this organization may waste resources on
excessive scanning. Yet in this type of environment,
efforts spent on generating flexibility are wasted.
Volberda states that information gathering efforts should
focus on the primary functions of the organization.
However, this organization may scan for another type of
information. Volberda does acknowledge that the firm is
capable of driving the environment. The flexible
organization in the stable environment has the ability to
 PICMET 2007 Proceedings, 5-9 August, Portland, Oregon - USA © 2007 PICMET
be the impetus for change in that environment. This
organization should at least passively scan for information
on outside forces that may change the environment but
can also search for opportunities in which they can direct
changes in the industry.
V. CONCLUSION
Organizations differ in their ability to respond to the
outside environment and different industries change at
different paces. In order to have an efficient and effective
environment scanning process, organizations must consider
their environmental turbulence and their ability to respond to
those changes. In addition to their own business objectives,
the organizational flexibility and environmental turbulence
should guide the type of information that is gathered and the
type of analysis that is conducted. The strategic context is
crucial to the effective utilization of information. The
framework provided in this paper can provide guidance to
organizations deciding where they should focus limited
environmental scanning resources.
REFERENCES
[1] Alhashmi, S., Siddizi, J. and Adhgar, B., “Staying competitive by
managing organizational knowledge,” Engineering Management,
vol.16(2) pp43-45, April 2006.
[2] Amit, R., Domowitz, I., and Fershtman, C., “Thinking one step ahead:
the use of conjectures in competitor analysis,” Strategic Management
Journal, vol. 9, 1988.
[3] Badein, A.G., “Contemporary challenges in the study of organizations,”
Journal of Management, vol. 12(2), 1986.
[4] Burkhardt, K.E. “Competitive intelligence and the product life cycle,”
Competitive Intelligence Review, vol. 12(3) pp35-43, 2001.
[5] Crosman, P., “CIOs make intelligence top priority,” Intelligence
Enterprise, pp14, April 1, 2006.
[6] Daft, R. L., and Huber, G. P., “How organizations learn: a communication
framework,” Research in the Sociology of Organizations, vol. 5, pp 1-36.
[7] Daft, R. L., and Weick, K. E., “Toward a model of organizations as
interpretation systems,” Academy of Management Review, 1984, vol. 9(2).
[8] Davenport, T.H. and Beck, J.C., “The strategy and structure of firms in the
attention economy,” Ivey Business Journal, pp49-54, March/April 2002.
[9] Denning, Basil W., “Strategic environmental appraisal,” Long Range
Planning, March 1973.
[10] “Differentiation through innovation: participants in I&T’s 2006 Executive
Summit explored the risks and rewards of innovation,” Insurance &
Technology, pp24, January 1, 2007.
[11] Dismukes J., “Information Accelerated Radical Innovation from principles
to an operational methodology,” The Industrial Geographer, vol. 3(1) pp
19-42, 2005.
[12] Djelic, M-L., and Ainamo, A., “The coevolution of new organizational
forms in the fashion industry: a historical and comparative study of
France, Italy, and the United States,” Organization Science, vol. 10(5), pp
622-637, September-October 1999.
[13] Duncan, R. B., “Modifications in decision structure in adapting to the
850
environment: some implications for organizational learning”, Decision
Sciences, pp 705-725. 1974.
[14] Duncan, R. B., and Weiss, A., “Organizational learning: implication for
organizational design” in B. Staw (ed), Research in Organizational
Behavior Greenwich:Jai Press, pp 75-123. 1979.
[15] Fiol, C.M. and Lyles, M.A., “Organizational learning,” Academy of
Management Review, vol. 10, pp 803-813. 1985.
[16] Francis, D.B. and Herring, J.P. “Key intelligence topics: a window on
the corporate competitive psyche” Competitive Intelligence Review,
vol. 10(4), pp10-19, 1999.
[17] Hall, W.K., “Survival strategies in a hostile environment,” Harvard
Business Review, September/October 1980.
[18] Handas, V. and Adas, A., “Predicting the level of organizational
effectiveness: a methodology for the construction firm,” Construction
Management and Economics, vol. 14, pp 341-352, 1996.
[19] Herring, J.P., “Scientific and technical intelligence: the key to R&D,”
Journal of Business Strategy, vol. 14(3) pp10-12, May-June 1993.
[21] Jervis, R., Perception and Misperception in International Politics,
Princetion: Princeton Unviersity Press, 1976.
[22] Kahaner, L. “Keeping an I on the competition – Internet resources have
changed the landscape for competitive-intelligence professionals,”
Information Week, pp97, September 25, 2000.
[23] Lee, T.J., “The Content and Expression of Strategy,” Strategic
communication management, pp28-34, February/March 1998.
[24] Lobel, S.A, Googins, B.K., and Bankert, E. “The future or work and
family: critical trends for policy, practice, and research,” Human Resource
Management, vol. 38(3), pp. 243-254, Fall 1999.
[25] Mayrhofer, W., “Warning: flexibility can damage your organizational
health!” Employee Relations, vol. 19(6), pp519-534, 1997.
[26] Nahm, A.Y., Vonderembse, M.A., and Rao, S.S., Ragu-Nathan, T.S.
“Time-based manufacturing improves business performance – results
from a survey,” International Journal of Production Economics,
pp213-229, 2006.
[27] Narchal, R. M., Kittappa, K., and Bhattacharya, P., “An environmental
scanning system for business planning,” Long Range Planning, vol.
20(6) 1987.
[28] Norling, P.M., Herring, J.P., Rosenkrans, W.A., Stellpflug, M. and
Kaufman, S.B., “Putting competitive technology intelligence to work,”
Research Technology Management, pp23- 28, September/October
2000.
[29] Palanisamy, R., “Measurement and enablement of information systems
for organizational flexibility: an empirical study,” Journal of Services
Research, vol. 3(2), October 2003 – March 2004.
[30] Reed, K. and Blunsdon, B., “Organizational flexibility in Australia,”
The International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 9(3),
June 1998.
[31] Roy, S. Paul and Joseph K Cheung,”Early warning systems: a
management tool for your company,” Managerial Planning,
March/April 1982.
[32] Ruff, F., “Corporate foresight: integrating the future business
environment into innovation and strategy,” International Journal of
Technology Management, vol.34(3/4) pp278-295, 2006.
[33] Simon, H., “Designing organizations for an information-rich world,” in
Computers, Communication, and the Public Interest, M. Greenberger
Ed., Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1971.
[34] Stauffer, D., “The power of competitive intelligence,” Harvard
Management Update, vol. 8(10), pp 3-4, October 2003.
[35] Volberda, H.W., “Toward the flexible form: how to remain vital in
Hypercompetitive environments,” Organization Science, vol.7(4), July-
August 1996.