Shadab Shadmani - MSc of MBA, Tehran University

Due to the increasing rate of environmental change, organizations life is increasingly dependent on their attitude and reaction to the changes. Sothat any negligence in today’s volatile and complex situation candamage the organization. Considering this point is sufficient that companies and their senior managers investigate external environmentwith the correct, scientific and practical methods and assess external affecting factors. In this paper, it is attempted to identify and rankchallenges and factors inhibiting the external environment analysis in the strategic management process. In this way, beginning with a reviewof resources and specialized sites and interviews with a number of experts, 20 restrictive factors for external environment analysis havebeen identified. Then, the impact and the importance of each were determined using interpretative structural modeling and finally thefactors were classified according to their level of dependence and power of influence. It was found that among these factors, diversity of elements and the components of economic environment, intense interaction between the economic components and the geographicchanges in global areas are the most important environmental barriers in the external environment analysis.

organization’s external environment, limitations, interpretative structural modeling, key barriers