Designing a Framework for Environmental Scanning in Military Organizations

Environmental scanning has become crucial for organizations in recent years as it plays an important role in understanding the strategic environment. Since military organizations have specific characteristics in comparison to commercial and public organizations, a customized scanning framework should be developed based on these differences so that they can scan their external environment properly. This study seeks to design a scanning framework for military organizations. Thus, the case for such an organization has been studied and based on the data gathered research questions were answered: which dimensions of the environment should be scanned and what is the best combination of expert for data gathering. In this exploratory research, first a literature review has been done and then a questionnaire used to collect data from 42 commanders of the organization under study and strategic management experts. Data analysis showed the answer to research questions about dimensions of the scanning and characteristics of the experts.