Scouting the terrain

What companies believe to be the nature of the marketplace is likely to influence thir strategic business plans. The same can be said of businesses that use issues monitoring to access the public policy environment. Greater sophistication has been used in an effort to refine strategic management information systems. In addition to straightforward polls and surveys, futurists, for example, have used social scientific techniques to offer valuable insights into the ways issues can be identified, monitored and analyzed. The key to making this activity effective is understanding a corporation’s culture, its organizational and political structures and the nature of public policy issues analysis. Companies can then determine what issues to monitor and analyse as they refine their public policy and strategic plans. This process requires more than periodic public opinion surveys.