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Environmental Scanning

Environmental scanning is an ongoing method of gathering information from the environment for use by an organization in strategic decision making and issues management. It is an early warning system for changes, issues, and reputation of the organization—a type of radar to monitor trends in order to help top management plan for the future. In addition to detecting emerging issues and helping avert crises, the strategic intelligence provided by environmental scanning can also help quantify existing problems.

Although environmental scanning or monitoring appears to have originated in the business management arena, David Dozier referred to it in the context of public relations as “the gathering of information about publics, about reactions of publics toward the organization, and about public opinion toward issues important to the organization” (1986, p. 1).

In addition to detecting threats and opportunities for the organization, environmental scanning also encourages future-oriented thinking in the organization's decision makers.

As a research method designed to bring information into the organization, environmental scanning is a function of an open system, which uses either two-way asymmetric or two-way symmetric models of communication.

Relevance of Environmental Scanning to Public Relations Professionals

Environmental scanning is important in public relations because successful management of dynamic organizations depends on the ability of the senior leaders to adapt to a rapidly changing external environment. Because management can become insulated from key publics, the public relations practitioner uses environmental scanning data to help keep the dominant coalition in touch with the opinions of those critical to the organization's success or failure.

Collecting and processing intelligence about the environment also makes the communication manager a useful and necessary part of the organization's management decision-making team. Those who don't do environmental scanning are often not included in the dominant coalition. Dozier and Larissa A. Grunig (1992) wrote, “This is one source of power that practitioners can use to redefine the public relations function and alter its vertical and horizontal structure” (p. 412).

The news cycle is now 24/7. Global audiences are empowered to share their opinions with and about the organization. As a result, organization leaders and communication professionals face information overload with the availability of more data than they can efficiently and effectively process. Having a formal environmental scanning program can help identify the sources of information most important to the organization. A scanning program, therefore, is a way of separating the wheat from the chaff.

Conducting Environmental Scanning

There are few guidelines on how to do environmental scanning. Scanners should have a deep understanding of the industry in which they operate and know the players in that arena as well. Scanners should watch for signs of change, look for signals of potential events on the horizon, study forecasts of experts, and write abstracts to crystallize thoughts. Interviews with key decision makers in the organization and a review of the current strategic plan may help develop an initial list of trends and issues to monitor.

To develop the objectives of the scanning program, the public relations practitioner must decide the level of resources to devote to scanning. A shift in power between organizations and publics who can now produce, consume, and instantly share content about the organization has increased the need for environmental scanning. Doug Newsom, Judy VanSlyke Turk and Dean Kruckeberg (2013, p. 63) called this shift a move to “more actual two-way symmetrical communication.”

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