| Competitive intelligence (CI) can be loosely defined as the process by which an organization legally and systematically collects, organizes, analyzes, and disseminates the information about its competitive environment. Notwithstanding the growing interest in CI, there are few empirical investigations on the work activities of CI professionals. This research addresses three basic questions: Who are CI professionals, which tasks and activities are they engaged in and how do they go about them, and what factors constrain their performance and completion of these tasks and activities? Twenty-eight CI professionals across Canada participated in the study from 24 different organizations, representing 16 specific industries. These CI professionals include various intelligence managers and analysts, market researchers, strategic advisors, and information specialists, representing two main groups: business professionals and information professionals. Their major goals are to heighten awareness of the competitive environment in which their organizations compete and to enhance decision making by their various clients. To achieve these goals, they engage in 10 general classes of activities: news scanning and monitoring; project management; responding ad hoc requests; communicating with various stakeholders; preparing CI products/deliverables; perusing and evaluating various materials; writing and editing diverse documents; coaching and training other staff for CI; undertaking training themselves; and administrative, non-CI, and sundry other activities. Among them, most of time is allocated to preparing CI products or deliverables, communicating with various stakeholders, and email processing and news scanning. Most of the information needs of the participants are not personal but derive from their organizational needs and clientele. The information seeking behavior of the participants can be situated on four axes: cyclical and non-cyclical, reactive and proactive, linear and non-linear, and formal and informal. In general, the information work activities of the CI professionals are highly context dependent and concept-driven, and circumscribed by three broad categories of constraints: organizational, situational, and personal competencies. |
