Tools and Processes to Monitor Changing Environment: A Multiple Case Study

To keep their strategy aligned with market conditions, companies need to understand changes occurring in their environment. Relying on interviews with managers of three organizations, we explored how they monitor environment and process data about it to make strategic decisions. We observed that environment monitoring is fragmented. Various practices and tools, however, make the company better informed about the ongoing changes. Three patterns of monitoring emerged. First, top management increases its involvement as soon as the situation becomes urgent. Second, when the legitimacy of the strategy is at stake, the diversity of people reasoning about the issue increases. Third, information channels get more structured and disciplined when assessing the power (nuisance capacity) of an actor of the environment.