It is about knowledge management in an organization through internal and external environment scanning.

1. Abrity Bhattacharya and Pooja Gopakumar

2. What is environment scanning
 Acquisition and use of information about events, trends,
and relationships in an organization’s external
environment.
 Detecting scientific, technical, economic, social, and
political trends and events.
 The knowledge of which would assist top management in
its task of charting the company’s future course of action.
 Concentrates on tracking down:
 Tacit knowledge (personal knowledge and experience) and
 Explicit knowledge (rule based and codified)

3. Objectives of environment
scanning
 Defining the potential threats, opportunities, or
changes for the institution implied by those
trends and events;
 Promoting a future orientation in the thinking of
management and staff; and,
 Alerting management and staff to trends that are
converging, diverging, speeding up, slowing
down, or interacting.

4. How Knowledge Management helps in
ES
 Tracking down the three categories of
information sources:
 Human resources;
 Textual resources; and
 Online resources
 Emphasizes an understanding of:
 Organization and its environments,
 Information culture in the organization,
 Information needs of the organization and users, and
 Also helps the organization in learning and
unlearning.

5. Knowledge Management Tools for
Environmental Scanning
 SWOT analysis.
 Internal environment of organization.
 External environment of organization.
 Porter’s Five Force Model
 External environment of industry.
 Internal environment of industry.

6. Strategic analysis of a company
SWOT

7. SWOT Canvas

8. Internal and external factors of SWOT

9. KM and SWOT

10. Five Force Model Canvas

11. KM and Five Force Model

12. Macro analysis
 The Economy (GNP or GDP, etc.);
 Government (political climate, taxes, etc);
 Legal: (environmental protection, copyright and intellectual
property rights, etc.);
 Technology (efficiency of infrastructure, etc.);
 Ecology (production processes and customer buying
habits, etc.);
 Socio-Cultural (demographic factors such as, population
size, age, education, income, etc.);
 Potential suppliers (labor supply, quality, etc.);
 Material suppliers (quality, quantity, price, etc.); and Service
providers.

13. Use of Environmental Scanning
 It cautions decision makers on the trends and changing
external environment.
 Understanding the external forces of change to develop
effective responses which secure or improve their
position in the future.
 Understanding internal environment to determine
resources, staff morale and motivation, management and
productivity.
 Organization can avoid surprises, identify strengths and
weaknesses, threats and opportunities, gain competitive
advantage, and plan strategically

14.  Helps knowledge managers in focusing on
information needs, information seeking, and
information use.
 Organizations can track down:
 The continuously created new knowledge by
capturing tacit knowledge to develop creative insight.
 The shared, explicit knowledge by which the
organization develops new products and innovations

15. Levels of scanning
 Organizations have to decide which level of
scanning is suitable for them:
 Regular and continuous scanning:
 To keep the proper health of the organization in order to
prosper economically, socially and grow
 Periodic/regular scanning:
 To assess their standing on knowledge and how it is used
 Irregular or ad-hoc scanning:
 Only when they notice a problem in knowledge
management.