Environmental Scanning Practices and Structure: An Empirical Study of Industrial Tunisian Group

Abstract

Background/Objectives: The main purpose of the research is to study the influence of the structural specificities on the environmental scanning practices of industrial Tunisian groups. This research presents the direct effect of structural specificity on environment scanning practices and verify the existence of linear relationships between centralization, formalization and complexity of the structure and the variables of the environmental scanning practices.

Methods/Statistical. Methodological tools of the research methods were quantitative, a survey based on a questionnaire is conducted with a sample of the relevant population, namely, subsidiaries of Tunisian industrial groups. The number of managers to whom we sent the questionnaire amounted to 283, a total of 120 usable questionnaires were collected. The overall response rate was 42.4%. The collected questionnaires were then processed using specialized SPSS software. With regard to the purification of measuring instruments, exploratory factor analysis.

Findings: The results of the hypothesis validation relating structure centralization and the environmental scanning practices mean that a weak centralization, a decentralization of decision-making. The second series of hypotheses concerning the link between structure formalization and environmental scanning practices, we were able to confirm the existence of all the relationships provided for between the formalization and the environmental scanning practices. The hypotheses concerning the relationship between the vertical complexity and the environmental scanning practices were rejected.

Improvements/Applications: The contributions of scanning environment practices at the corporate level and at the level of group subsidiaries, and stimulate the efforts made by companies in the field of scanning environment.