Marketing Management

1. Pamantasan ng Cabuyao
Katapatan Subdivision, Banay-banay, Cabuyao, Laguna
Graduate School and Continuing Professional Education
NERICA BARRIENTOS-MANASAN
GS_MBA-01
Dr. Niño J. Viñas
Case Study #3
Case Study:
“Scanning the Business Environment for Information: A Grounded Theory Approach” by
Zita de Conceicao Cordeiro Pereira Correia, 1996
Reference:
https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/14714/1/245587_Vol1.pdf
DIGESTED CASE STUDY
Facts of the Study:
The study looks at how a sample of Portuguese chemical companies searches for
information in their business environment. It was discussed that nineteen companies had
been studied and forty senior executives had been interviewed. The multiple case study
approach was combined with the grounded theory method of qualitative analysis in the
methodology used.
The categories, the principal relationships among them, and the contextual factors
that shape the categories and relationships are the three main components of the grounded
theory proposed in this thesis. A few key relationships between these categories explain
variation among companies. The phenomenon under study is environmental scanning,
which is the core category to which the other six categories that emerged from the
qualitative data analysis were related: perceived environmental change and strategic
change, information consciousness and information climate, organizational outwardness,
and individual exposure to information. The relationships discovered among these
categories aid in understanding how managerial perceptions of environmental change
influence strategic change, as well as how internal organizational and individual factors

2. Pamantasan ng Cabuyao
Katapatan Subdivision, Banay-banay, Cabuyao, Laguna
Graduate School and Continuing Professional Education
influence environmental scanning activity. Internal contextual factors include company
history and culture; external contextual factors include the overall economic, social,
cultural, and political conditions that characterize modern Portugal and shape those
organizations to some extent.
Issues:
Information seeking is an activity that is undertaken with the goal of identifying and
selecting information to satisfy a previously identified information need, the satisfaction of
which would allow the individual to solve a problem or make a decision. Rouse and Rouse
(1984) reviewed the contributions of disciplines such as psychology, library science,
management, computer science, and systems engineering to the body of knowledge on
human information seeking, and defined information seeking as "the process of identifying
and selecting among alternative information sources."
This study uncovered three major issues concerning the problematic of
environmental scanning in Portuguese chemical companies: 1) The scanning focus and
scanning mode used by managers are insufficient to deal with the significant discontinuities
they perceive in their business environment; 2) The integration of environmental
information with internally-generated information is only achieved at the top level, through
senior managers' ability to relate and integrate disparate data; and 3) However, the fact that
the three "best" companies have developed distinct information cultures suggests that there
is no "best" culture: different cultures may be required for different contexts.
Resolutions:
External factors perceived to be causing environmental change were classified into
two broad categories: the regulatory framework and the business structure. The regulatory
changes were linked to joining the EC and government intervention, whereas the business
changes were linked to the trend of concentration in the chemical industry, the entry of new
competitors and products, and the client industry crisis.
Changes in the regulatory framework include new rules and procedures to follow,
such as regulations concerning the registration of drugs, the adoption of the patent regime

3. Pamantasan ng Cabuyao
Katapatan Subdivision, Banay-banay, Cabuyao, Laguna
Graduate School and Continuing Professional Education
in force in Europe and the demand for higher standards regarding product quality; the
progressive elimination of customs tariffs and its consequences upon the fragile
competitiveness of the national companies were identified as major concerns, and fear was
manifested that technical barriers would replace customs barriers.
Government intervention in market regulation was deemed excessive, particularly
in the health sector, where the production of new medicines, as well as the setting of drug
prices, is subject to government approval; the banking system's policy of high interest rates
was identified as another negative form of government intervention, as most banks were
nationalized at the time the fieldwork was conducted and high interest rates were in effect.
Changes in business structure included acquisitions and mergers, as well as the
disappearance of smaller companies that succumbed to competition, as a result of the
concentration trend that prevails in the chemical industries as a whole, with special
emphasis on the pharmaceutical and cosmetics sub-sectors, as well as the resin derived
products and synthetic fiber products segments. The crisis in some client industries, such
as the shoe and textile industries, was a significant source of instability. Cultural factors
were cited to explain the Portuguese entrepreneurs' reluctance to form strategic alliances.
The assessment of environmental attributes revealed that the environment had become
extremely hostile and complex, despite the fact that turbulence was thought to remain
relatively low. The comparison of environmental change results obtained through the
assessment of task environment attributes and the analysis of perceptions of change
occurring in the general and task environments revealed compatible results.