ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING, STRATEGIC BEHAVIOR AND PERFORMANCE IN SMALL COMPANIES

This paper’s theme lies in the interaction between the organizational strategy and the environment of small companies and aims to analyze the relation between the scanning of environmental information, strategic behavior and performance. As a research method, the survey-type quantitative approach was used. The application of questionnaires and data analysis were also used alongside this method, using correlations and analysis of variance to verify the differences among companies classified as prospector, analyzer and defender, in their scanning efforts and use of information sources. The main results show that prospectors scan data from the competition as well as technological aspects and access written sources of information and internal sources of information more frequently than those that adopt another type of strategic behavior. Overall, the scanning of information sources was more associated with the performance than with the strategy measured by the strategic behavior typology.