Environmental uncertainty and scanning behavior : an assessment of top-level hotel executives

摘要

Serious concern by hoteliers pertaining to how managers' perceptions of environmental uncertainty may influence the incidence and scope of environmental scanning in the company's strategy formulation process has not been matched by appropriate research in the area. It has been argued that objective measures of the instability, or volatility associated with the heterogeneous and diverse hospitality business environment may be less strongly related to the strategy-making process than subjective perceptions to which managers respond. The findings here suggest that hotel executives perceive higher levels of hostility, dynamism, and complexity in the task environment when compared to the remote environment and tend to scan the environment with greater frequency and more broadly in response to increased uncertainty.