Environmental Scanning, Anticipatory Information and Associated Problems: Insight from Kuwait

This article investigates the strategic behaviors of Kuwaiti executives from 86 companies with regard to environmental scanning characteristics in the form of eight hypotheses. The main results show that Kuwaiti executives have trouble dealing with environmental scanning and weak signal suggested by Ansoff (1975). Results also suggest that executives must recognize the role of strategic information and begin actively to manage and plan its collection as a corporate resource. It is suggested that a computer-based system for environmental scanning would probably have to be primarily oriented for educating and training purposes. OBJECTIVES & MOTIVATION OF THE RESEARCH Companies are evolving in turbulent and equivocal environments. This requires companies to be alert and watchful for the detection of strategic information and discontinuities about emerging threats and opportunities and to initiate further probing based on such detection (Rouibah & Ould-Ali 2002). Despite that environmental scanning systems appeared in the 1967 (Aguilar 1967), it continues to be looked at by many western companies as a mean to position the firm to stay abreast of environmental events and trends that threaten its existence, or offer opportunities to exploit (Freeman 1999, Groom & David 2001, Rouibah & Ould-Ali 2002). Although many scholar researchers have investigated environmental scanning in many western companies, few papers have tended to investigate the subject in companies that belong to less developed countries (LCD). Moreover, research papers that investigate the use of strategic information is nearly lacking. This research aims to fill in this gap, and to contribute to literature by examining the environmental scanning practices by Kuwaiti executives. Specifically, the research questions of interest include: are Kuwaiti companies familiar with the concepts of environmental scanning and strategic information? What other alternative concepts do Kuwaiti executives use to refer to environmental scanning? What obstacles Kuwaiti executives are facing to easily assimilate environmental scanning? This research has several benefits. First, it is expected that the research will help to identify executives’ requirements and necessary training programs to overcome environmental scanning obstacles. Second, the paper aims to convince top managers about the importance to manage strategic information as a source of competitive advantage.