Search results

Macro‐environmental scanning is a first step in strategic planning, which is essential in an emerging industry such as liquid biofuels. The purpose of this paper is to identify the dimensions within which the governments of Brazil, the USA and Germany have constructed the macro‐environment for liquid biofuels over time and to test for similarities between the governments’ constructs.

Documentary research was carried out on official public policies and program documents on the topic of liquid biofuels, covering a ten‐year period from 1997 to 2006. The database consisted of 624 documents from the Brazilian government, 854 from the American government and 168 documents from the German government. Text mining was used to extract information from the texts by applying a specific analysis structure that was built on macro‐environmental dimensions as expressed by their respective dimensional words “d‐words”. The “d‐words” were selected based on their usage frequency in the knowledge fields related to each dimension.

The results indicate that the macro‐environments for liquid biofuels, as configured by the governments under analysis, differ systematically and over time in their emphasis of specific macro‐environmental dimensions.

There are two primary aspects of this study which are original and valuable: the application of text‐mining techniques as a tool for strategic planning and the development of a particular tool to extract knowledge from text documents and to categorize them according to their macro‐environmental dimensions.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an evidence-based environmental scanning model that will provide a methodological framework for conducting community-engaged and community-focused research, with a particular emphasis on northern communities in Canada.

The study has adopted a multifaceted environmental scanning approach to understand the Inuvialuit Settlement Region communities. The research design is informed by various environmental models as discussed in literature from a broad range of domains such as business, library and information science (LIS), and a sophisticated multimethod data gathering approach that included field trips, observations, surveys, as well as informal methods of community engagement.

The paper proposes an environmental scan model as a novel approach to community-focused digital library (DL) development. The paper identifies both macro- and micro-environmental landscapes as applicable to the development of a DL for communities in Canada’s North. The macro-environmental landscapes include: geographical, historical and sociocultural, political and regulatory, economic, technological, competition, and human resource. The micro-environmental landscapes include: stakeholder and community, linguistic, information resource, and ownership.

The environmental scanning model and its key components presented in this paper provide a novel and concrete example of a project that aims to organize information for increased access and to create value through the design and implementation of an infrastructure for a cultural heritage DL. The environmental scan model will also contribute to both research and practice in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS), particularly in the area of DL development for rural, remote, and indigenous communities.

A study of ABB, Shell and CP Group of companies in Thailand found that the scope and management of environmental scanning activities within organizations evolve continuously as a result of volatility of the environment and the diverse nature of businesses. In the case of ABB and Shell the respective regional head office along with global head quarter participate actively in the process of environmental scanning in order to make strategic choices and grant approvals for operating budgets and new investments. The regional head quarter, in the case of ABB and Shell, plays the intervening role as information and capital resource provider whereas the country offices collect specific information at the industry and market levels and use it for implementing specific programs. In the case the of CP Group, the president and several vice presidents at the head office in Thailand play the bulk of the role in environmental scanning. All companies use business performance indicators to review the scope and the management of their environmental scanning practices.

Very little is known about the business environment in the countries of l'Afrique Occidentale Française (or francophone), the French‐speaking countries of West Africa, here referred to as francophone West Africa (FWA). Yet chief executive officers and corporate managers are under increasing pressures to assess the business environment before entering any such overseas markets. Therefore, the aim of paper is to scan the macro‐environmental forces operating in the FWA market. An audit of these external factors produces an “ETOP” framework, describing the current external threats and opportunities for would‐be entrants, and identifying practical implications for international marketing planners. The FWA countries are classic case of an emerging market, about which more deserves to be known, especially by non‐francophone decision makers in multinational corporations.

Within the context of a broader project that analysed CSR practices, this paper seeks to explain a methodological approach to web‐based research that the authors call “hypertext ethnography”. This approach aims to enable the paper to focus on the relations between three publicly listed corporations in Australia and the recipients of a selection of their CSR programs.

Informed by ethnographic principles, hypertext ethnography provided the research protocols and analytical frame that were used to deconstruct the meanings in web texts that represented the connections between the corporations and their CSR stakeholders.

The corporations and the stakeholders articulated their perspectives on CSR in affirmative ways, apparently to maintain their positive benefactor‐recipient relations. While these discourses held the potential to mask more complex tensions in their relationships, the web was found to provide a rich hypertextual story that had a vastly broader scope than the self‐contained corporate and stakeholder agendas.

The research approach presented here provides a useful first approximation to the study of CSR, through self representations, and offers a rigorous critical understanding of the practice of CSR. The approach can achieve much with only limited resources, but it could be developed through on‐site ethnographic research.

Because image‐conscious corporations are often reluctant to participate in CSR research, the unobtrusive approach of hypertext ethnography can provide access to important data for the researcher. This is especially significant in the case of critical research, and when the characteristics of the CSR contributions or stakeholder relations are to be investigated.

This paper offers a new way for approaching the study of CSR, by taking advantage of rich sources of data that are publicly available. Treating the web texts as primary data and critically analysing them following rigorous research protocols, enable new opportunities for understanding the public representations of CSR.

The article traces the origins of the competitive intelligence fields and identifies both the practitioner, academic and inter‐disciplinary views on CI practice. An examination of the literature relating to the field is presented, including the identification of the linear relationship which CI has with marketing and strategic planning activities.

Bibliometric assessment of the discipline. Findings reveal the representation of cross disciplinary literature which emphasises the multi‐faceted role which competitive intelligence plays in a modern organization.

The analysis supports the view of competitive intelligence being an activity consisting dominantly of environmental scanning and strategic management literature. New fields of study and activity are rapidly becoming part of the competitive intelligence framework.

The analysis only uses ABI Inform as the primary sources for literature alongside Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) and Competitive Intelligence Foundation (CIF) publications, particularly the Journal of Competitive Intelligence and Management. A more comprehensive bibliometric analysis might reveal additional insights. Simple counts were used for analytical purposes rather than co‐citation analysis.

Attention is drawn to the need for the integration of additional, complementary fields of study and competitive intelligence practice. It is clear that today's competitive intelligence practitioner cannot afford to rely on what they learned 20 years ago in order to ensure the continued competitive advantage of their firm. A keen understanding of all business functions, especially marketing and planning is advocated.

While there have been bibliographies of competitive intelligence literature there have been few attempts to relate this to the three distinct areas of practice. This article is of use to scholars in assisting them to disentangle the various aspect of competitive intelligence and also to managers who wish to gain an appreciation of the potential which competitive intelligence can bring to marking and business success.

This paper has a twofold aim. Firstly, to give some insight into competitive intelligence practices in a little‐explored area in the field of competitive intelligence: the higher education sector. Secondly, to find out more about the factors influencing competitive intelligence practices, since little research on this subject has been published.

The investigation used a mixed‐methods approach, including face‐to‐face, semi structured interviews with 47 university managers (degree coordinators, deans and vice‐rectors), followed by a semi‐structured questionnaire carried out with 400 degree coordinators and deans and analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. The interviews informed the questionnaire design.

The survey confirms the proposed framework's usefulness for analysing the enabler and inhibitor factors in an organisation for promoting efficient competitive intelligence practice and also gives some insight into which factors enable or inhibit the efficacy of competitive intelligence practices in Spanish universities.

The research focused on degree design adapted to the EHEA. A larger study designed to focus on other management areas in universities would provide a fuller picture of factors influencing competitive intelligence practices.

The findings indicate the areas where universities could plan actions to optimise intelligence activities, make the most of them and stand out from the rest.

This paper sets out a framework to describe factors related to intelligence function and cycle. In addition, the study reveals which indicators act as enablers or inhibitors for competitive intelligence practices and takes account of some of the particular features of the higher education sector.

This paper aims to develop and present a new planning framework of social marketing, known as consumer research, segmentation, design of the social programme, implementation, evaluation and sustainability (CSD-IES).

The proposed framework is based on recent theoretical developments in social marketing and is informed by the key strengths of existing social marketing planning approaches.

The CSD-IES planning framework incorporates emerging principles of social marketing. For example, sustainability in changed behaviour, ethical considerations in designing social marketing programmes, the need for continuous research to understand the changing needs of the priority audience during the programme and the need for explicit feedback mechanisms.

The CSD-IES framework is a dynamic and flexible framework that guides social marketers, other practitioners and researchers to develop, implement and evaluate effective and sustainable social marketing programmes to influence or change specific behaviours based on available resources.

This paper makes an important contribution to social marketing theory and practice by integrating elements of behaviour maintenance, consideration of ethical perspectives and continuous feedback mechanisms in developing the CSD-IES framework, bringing it in line with the global consensus definition of social marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and design a paradigm model for universities' information acquisition behavior in competitive intelligence process.

The sampling has been conducted in two stages. First, purposive sampling has been done among Iranian universities of medical sciences. Second, 20 university staff members were selected using the snowball method. The research was conducted through semi-structured interviews.

The purpose of acquiring information in competitive intelligence process is to meet organizational and individual information needs in active and passive ways. The characteristics of information acquisition and how to acquire it are varied. Enablers include the information sources, individual, organizational characteristics and environmental pressures. Barriers are individual, organizational, environmental factors. The consequences of information acquisition are success, failure and partial success. Accordingly, a paradigm model of information behavior has been designed.

This is the first study to identify information behavior of universities in competitive intelligence process. In addition to why and how to acquire information, this study also looks at facilitators and barriers factors.