Practice of Environmental Scanning in Large Private Corporations in India

This paper presents the findings of a study aimed at understand the environmental scanning practices in large private sector corporations in India. The findings of the study are as follows: a) Developments in the input, marketing and regulatory environment are of primary concern to large Indian corporations. Developments in socio-political and international environment are accorded relatively lower importance. b) They are selective in their choice of sources and ways of collecting the information. The choice has varied with the level of relevance of an environmental category and the environmental category itself. By and large, there is preference for published sources of information and collecting the same through periodic deliberate search. In addition to newspapers and periodicals, reports of industry associations are considered to be a key source of information an developments in all categories of environment. c) The preparation of companies having special organizational arrangements to lead and coordinate the scanning activities is encouraging. Typical organizational arrangements have been to have special departments like corporate planning department, management services group and market research department. d) The most used ways of communicating the developments in the environment are formal meetings and special notes. e) The major constraints in scanning relate to consistency in multiple sources of information, delays in availability and communication of information and frustration of the people in charge of scanning. f) Several common characteristics were noticed with respect to the scanning practices of multinational and domestic companies. Out of the top twenty five environmental factors of concern to these categories of companies, 16 were common to both. The overall ranking pattern of environmental categories, sources of information on the most relevant and relevant environmental factors and ways of collecting information were not markedly different. However, there were difference in the environmental category occupying the top position, use of in company studies and consultants in scanning. Multinationals in the sample companies can be said to be more broad based systematic and futuristic in scanning the environment.