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This paper aims to illustrate how integrating competitive intelligence (CI) into a US health-care firm can aid in information sharing and building knowledge for the organization.

This study is exploratory using a systematic literature review to develop a conceptual model applied to the US health-care industry.

This research presents key propositions of CI’s role in the CI process along with the C-suite’s role in supporting a process and culture to ultimately, gain competitive advantage through the knowledge-based view.

With the growing volume of data, a unified system and culture within a firm is paramount. The US health-care system is a privatized industry that has become more competitive stifling information sharing. The need for prompt and accurate decision-making has become an imperative. Crises, like the current COVID-19 pandemic, only exacerbate the issue. This model offers a blue print for executives to build a CI function and encourage information sharing.

Previous research has focused on the CI process and its value. Yet, little research is found on how to integrate CI into a firm and its role through the CI process. This study builds a conceptual model addressing integration and the flow of information to knowledge along with key firm dynamics to nurture the function. Although the model is applied specifically to US health care, it offers application to most any industry.

The paper aims to clarify the potential impact of data gathered from social media (SM) in the competitive intelligence (CI) process of organizations. As use of SM expands, analysis of this data becomes a critical business need providing essential support for decision makers. This paper seeks to examine how SM be used to enhance CI in an organizational context.

This paper adopted an exploratory mixed-method approach followed by a sequential and equal status design, with qualitative semi-structured interviews, accounting for the qualitative study and serving as precursor to a quantitative structured survey. Interviewees included a university professor and CI consultant, an SM analyst and a subject in a management position – all in the field of CI. A survey was sent to Fortune 1000 companies. Some 227 companies replied.

The findings were that the majority of respondents produce CI reports at least monthly, and that information transmitted mainly by presentation within organizations. Over 70% of companies outsource CI activities to specialized firms, while 80.9% of organizations felt CI improved their relationship with their customers. Not surprisingly, as the number of people dedicated to CI activities increased, the likelihood of an organization hiring outside companies specializing in CI diminished.

All organizations sampled were large US companies; thus, small- and medium-sized enterprises were excluded, as were non-US viewpoints. As survey respondents were anonymous, the source of data at the level of the individual is missing. Finally, only three interviewees provided the qualitative data.

This investigation determined organizations should have an established and well-structured CI department. Furthermore, such a department should have between five and ten employees to maximize the potential. Outsourcing depends on the company’s specific needs. Nevertheless, regardless of whether it outsources CI activities or not, each firm should monitor SM to enhance the CI process.

Much SM-based CI is either non-existent or in “embryotic” stages in most companies, and therefore still a work in progress. Furthermore, as SM is a relatively new phenomenon, studies supporting its implementation are scarce. Companies stand to gain significant improvements to CI if SM is effectively used.

The objective of the study was to compare competitive intelligence (CI) practices of exporters in South Africa and Belgium.

An e‐mail and postal survey in a sample of 292 Belgian and 309 South African exporting companies was carried out in which CI‐practices and opinions and attitudes towards CI were measured.

Most respondents report a “CI culture” in their companies. South African and Belgian exporters are, however, not yet well equipped and not very active to conduct effective CI, especially in the areas of planning, process and structure, data collection, data analysis, and especially skills development. In both countries CI‐activities are usually not organized in a separate department and, if they are, CI is mostly done in the marketing and sales department. Managers from both countries consider similar types of information important, and they rely on similar sources of information. Although the responsibility for CI is more a top management issue in Flanders than it is in South Africa, South African companies have on average a longer tradition of organized CI‐activity and more full‐ and part‐time staff is involved in CI‐activity. These differences can be attributed to the fact that, as compared to Belgium, South Africa is an emerging export country in which the need for more formalised CI‐activity focusing on the collection of relevant data is more apparent.

This is the first comprehensive study of CI‐practices in the two countries. The results lead to a number of recommendations for the exporting companies in both countries and in general add to the knowledge of the position of CI in companies.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the nature of community information (CI) and proposes a data model, based on the entity-relationship approach adopted in the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), which may assist with the development of future metadata standards for CI systems.

The two main data structure standards for CI, namely the element set developed by the Alliance of Information and Referral Systems (AIRS) and the MARC21 Format for CI, are compared by means of a mapping exercise, after which an entity-relationship data model is constructed, at a conceptual level, based on the definitions of CI found in the literature.

The AIRS and MARC21 data structures converge to a fair degree, with MARC21 providing for additional detail in several areas. However, neither structure is systematically and unambiguously defined, suggesting the need for a data model. An entity-relationship data modelling approach, similar to that taken in FRBR, yielded a model that could be used as the basis for future standards development and research. It was found to effectively cover both the AIRS and MARC21 element sets.

No explicit data model exists for CI, and there has been little discussion reported about what data elements are required to support CI seeking.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the findings of an audit of community information (CI) portals to provide an overview of how CI is being organised and presented on the web by aggregating services, and how CI is being shaped and shared in community networks. It also investigates the role that public libraries play in online CI provision.

The research sampled CI portals online within the Australian web domain (.au). An audit of 88 portals was undertaken to establish the scope, role and usefulness of the portals. The audit included a comprehensive usability analysis of a sub set of 20 portals evaluated for 20 different heuristics based on Nielsen's heuristic model.

The research finds that the challenge facing portals is not a lack of information, it is the need to improve the mediation between the community services and people that CI portals promise useful and usable information for. While public libraries remain integral to the provision of CI in their geographical area, they now form part of a larger online network for CI provision, involving a wide range of organisations.

The paper discusses the ways CI portals contribute to the provision of information about community services and identifies areas where improvements are needed. In particular, it discusses how these sites function as part of larger CI networks and where more innovative, and more standardised, design could lead to greater levels of engagement and utility.

Competitive intelligence (CI) includes all the information and knowledge in a business. It enables the creation, perpetuation and transmission of knowledge coming from markets and corporate stakeholders. Therefore, it seems appropriate to consider the following question: what are the levers of a CI process on knowledge management in a coopetitive context? The paper aims to discuss this issue.

To answer this question, the authors conducted an empirical study with a sample of 153 high-tech firms in Europe.

The results identify four business groups according to levels of monitoring and cooperation between firms, and three types of supervision in business networks.

This paper brings together the concepts of knowledge management and CI within firms that have adopted a coopetitive behaviour.

Financial representation research has gained considerable attention among researchers. The argument is on representation preferences and the effect of graph versus text representation of financial data. The display format for net income (NI) and comprehensive income (CI) has been proven to influence users’ financial decision-making process, depending upon users’ characteristics. It is worth noting that millennials are users whose characteristics and cognitive skills differ from those of preceding generations. This study aims to unravel millennials’ preferences for the earnings information and representation when making financial analysis and judgement, thus providing insight on their decision-making strategy, either perceptual or analytical.

This study used a 2 × 2 full factorial of experimental design, in which the financial representation in the following two ways: the textual disclosure content (NI versus CI) and the graphical display content (NI versus CI) was manipulated. This study conducted an online experiment with a total of 60 final participants.

The results reveal that textual disclosure of CI influences millennials’ financial decisions. This study also discovered that millennials’ financial decisions are unaffected by graphical displays of financial data as they place greater importance on textual financial data, particularly on CI representations, when making financial decisions.

Millennials are financial users who apply different financial analysis and judgement strategy from their predecessor. They value textual disclosure and CI when analysing firms’ performance.

This study contends that millennials are the financial users who will use analytical strategies while making financial decisions.

While competitive intelligence (CI) is a relatively new business discipline, it is evolving in complexity and importance, to maintain pace with rapid business development. It is the aim of this paper to establish the level of maturity of the CI function within a South African retail bank based on key characteristics for different levels of maturity.

The research for the paper is based on an extensive review of literature and application of the grounded theory research approach. Grounded theory is more interested in theory building than theory testing, which makes it eminently suitable for areas of research to which little attention had been paid and in which little exploration had taken place. For the empirical evidence, a survey was conducted among a pre‐selected group of respondents of a South African retail bank by means of a questionnaire and personal interviews.

The results of the survey indicated that the CI function was at a mid‐level of maturity, after the underlying elements of the CI functions had been surveyed. While there is significant opportunity for the function to develop to a world‐class level, such growth is limited by respondents' requirements. The CI function is used in support of various levels of decision makers for various levels of decision making. There appears to be a lack of, and great requirement for, the provision of analytical products. Respondents indicated that the CI function should move towards being a key component of company strategy.

The research was built around the various elements of the CI function, namely the key information needs of CI users, CI deliverables and capabilities, analytical products, relationship with management, sources of information, level of staffing of the CI function as well as the period of time the CI function has been operational. Some of the key findings were that the CI function should assist senior management in developing and reviewing a set of Key Intelligence Needs (KINs); that the CI function should be appropriately resourced; that the CI function should develop and deliver information on trends and implications in respect of the KINs through application of resources and analytical skills; that the CI function should develop and deliver early warning signals.

No research has been done on the level of maturity of the CI function in South African companies. The paper provides recommendations on ways for the CI function at the retail bank to evolve from a mid‐level of maturity to a world‐class level.

The purpose of this survey research is twofold. First, to study and report the process that is commonly used to create and maintain a competitive intelligence (CI) program in organizations. And second, to provide an analysis of several emergent text mining, web mining and visualization‐based CI tools, which are specific to collection and analysis of intelligence.

A range of recently published research literature on CI processes, applications, tools and technologies to collect and analyze competitive information within organizations is reviewed to explore their current state, issues and challenges learned from their practice.

The paper provides executive decision makers and strategic managers a better understanding of what methods are available and appropriate to the decisions they must make and the steps involved in CI undertaking.

The findings of this research provide the managers of CI programs a context for understanding which tools and techniques are better suited to their specific types of problems; and help them develop and evaluate a usable set of tools and best practices to apply to their industry.