Scanning the business environment: some conceptual issues

The process of scanning the business environment is reconceptualized on the basis of a critical analysis of Aguilar’s pioneering work on scanning, as well as that of Lawrence and Lorsch’s contingency theory. Concepts of general systems theory, entropy and communication theory are utilized in order to prove the hypothesis: the level of complexity of the environment, “imposes” on the organization a specific or analogous scanning process, and in turn an analogous communication system which is in effect the structure of the organization itself.