Environmental-scanning behavior among private practice physical therapy firms

Department of Physical Therapy, Southwestern Allied Health Sciences School, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas 75235-8876.

This study examined the extent to which private practice physical therapy firms focused on specific environmental sectors in the process of making business decisions. Furthermore, the relationship between scanning behavior and both entrepreneurship level (high, middle, low) and direct-access status (complete, partial, none) were analyzed. The sample consisted of 450 randomly selected private practice decision makers (eg, owners, chief executive officers) from throughout the United States. Data were gathered using a mailed, structured questionnaire. Physical therapy private practices were found to differentially attend to environmental sectors with the customer sector ranked the highest followed, in descending order, by the technological, regulatory, socio-cultural-political, competitive, and economic sectors. In addition, firms in the high-level entrepreneurship group scanned the technological and marketing (customer, competitive) environments to a significantly greater degree than did the middle- and low-level groups. Direct-access status had no effect on scanning behavior.