ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the important role of the stakeholders that operate around the periphery (frontline) of the multinational organization as they sense important changes that emerge in the local markets where they are located. The collective sensing of changes in business conditions among major frontline stakeholder groups that operate around the corporate headquarters and overseas business entities is an important source of environmental intelligence. Environmental scanning as the "activity of acquiring information" from the environment is a core activity that tries to gain insights into the changes that happen around the local business environments of the multinational corporation that can inform strategic decisions. In turbulent global markets the ability to obtain early signals and foresee competitive developments around the local subsidiaries is important for the development of effective responses. Different information aggregation techniques can be applied to collect and present the updated insights of the frontline stakeholders to inform strategic issue management systems and deal more effectively with environmental change.
