20.500.12556/DKUM-89379 SME top management perception of environmental uncertainty and gender differences during COVID-19 Environmental scanning has become increasingly crucial for an organisation’s existence and a matter of interest for scholars and professionals. This research presents an outline of the situation in the field of multidimensional environmental scanning, focusing on Slovenian micro, small and medium sized organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the paper aims to examine if top managers perceive the multidimensional (external) environment as uncertain and if there have been gender differences in multidimensional (external) environmental uncertainty perception during the COVID-19 pandemic. We researched the field of ecological, social, technological, economic, and political–legal environments. The nonparametric Mann–Whitney U test and descriptive statistics were used to test the research hypotheses. The results show that top managers are not aware enough of multidimensional environmental uncertainty. They do not perceive the ecological and social environment as unpredictable at all. Among the studied environments, they perceive the political–legal environment as most unpredictable. There are no statistically significant gender differences in perceptions of ecological, social, technological, economic, and political–legal environmental uncertainty. We suggest SME top managers pay more attention to environmental uncertainty and use environmental scanning methods to achieve more sustainable development. strategic management environmental uncertainty ecological environment social environment technological environment economic environment political–legal environment SME top managers COVID-19 pandemic Slovenia strateški management okoljska negotovost ekološko okolje družbeno okolje tehnološko okolje ekonomsko okolje politično-pravno okolje vodilni managerji MSP mala in srednja podjetja pandemija Slovenija true false true MDPI Angleški jezik Slovenski jezik Znanstveno delo 2024-07-05 14:51:20 2024-07-05 15:05:42 2024-07-06 04:02:50 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2022 0 0 Str. 1-33 Št. 6, št. članka 3593 Letn. 14 2022 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno NiDoloceno 2022-02-07 2022-03-15 2022-03-18 005.3 102930179 10.3390/su14063593 2071-1050 Versic-2022-SME_Top_Management_Perception_of_E.pdf Versic-2022-SME_Top_Management_Perception_of_E.pdf 1 7AA8B11393BDF544C7C28850D2CECE89 ec6cd3fcaf70285270865e57b92519e91fdc32b07ac015b1cb2ed57e1c4ef3f5 ee503586-3ace-11ef-bcfd-00155d000105 https://dk.um.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=181189 https://doi.org/10.3390/su14063593 0 4e7b3e4c-3acd-11ef-bcfd-00155d000105 https://dk.um.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=181184 Ekonomsko-poslovna fakulteta 0 0 0