AbstractOrganizations are in constant interaction with their environment. This phenomenon has been termed in the literature as the environment‐organizational interface. An organization acquires information concerning changes in its environment via some scanning system. This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation of the scanning process. The relationships of scanning to different environmental states is discussed and various propositions advanced. Different environmental states (stable versus dynamic) are moderated by the determinants of hierarchical levels and functional specialties in the fir