Best Things Are Free
management of colleges and universities depends upon the ability of the senior leaders to adapt to rapidly changing external environment. Unfortunately, the lead time once enjoyed by decisionmakers to analyze and respond to these and other changes is decreasing. Traditional long-range planning models, with their inward focus and reliance on historical data, do not encourage decisionmakers to anticipate environmental changes and assess their impact on the organization (Cope, 1981). The underlying assumption of such models is that any future change is a continuation of the direction and rate of present trends among a limited number of social, technological, economic, and political variables. Thus, the future for the institution is assumed to reflect the past and present or, in essence, to be "surprise-free." However, we know that this is not true, and the further we plan into the future, the less it will be true.
What is needed is a method that enables decisionmakers both to understand the external environment and the interconnections of its various sectors and to translate this understanding into the institution's planning and decisionmaking processes. Environmental scanning is a method of accomplishing this.
Brown and Weiner (1985) define environmental scanning as "a kind of radar to scan the world systematically and signal the new, the unexpected, the major and the minor" (p. ix). Aguilar (1967), in his study of the information gathering practices of managers, defined scanning as the systematic collection of external information in order to (1) lessen the randomness of information flowing into the organization and (2) provide early warnings for managers of changing external conditions. More specifically, Coates (1985) identified the following objectives of an environmental scanning system:
• detecting scientific, technical, economic, social, and political trends and events important to the institution,
• defining the potential...
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