Abstract

The increasing volatility of their companies' environment is a growing concern for executives. IS-based environmental scanning that complements the accounting information system domain can help to manage this challenge. A substantial body of knowledge on such information systems exists, but these concepts often go unused in practice. This article develops five design guidelines for environmental scanning systems that are more applicable than those outlined in previous research. In doing so, we first compile a set of requirements based on the principle of economic efficiency, and then use findings from the absorptive capacity theory to specify them. Challenging several implementations against these requirements in a multicase study generates findings that we synthesize into design guidelines. They address diverse areas: designing a more comprehensive model for information gathering, setting up a collective learning process for interpreting information, using IS to enable management techniques familiar to executives, designing processes for more interorganizational integration of environmental scanning systems, and accelerating prototyping.

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