Environmental scanning in U.S. corporations.

Environmental scanning is a new activity among corporations, because of its importance, corporations need to progress by stages to achieve a structured and formal system of scanning, and this takes time. This paper is based on a study examining the evolution and state of environmental scanning among corporations, and finds that the essential difference between scanning at the corporate and at the product/market level is not observed by all companies. Ideally, there should be a close liaison between the two levels so that each may reinforce the scanning effort of the other.