Abstract
Is the field of Competitive Intelligence (CI) or Intelligence Studies (IS) a proper scientific field of study? The empirical investigation found that academic and professional within CI and IS could not agree upon what dimensions, topics or content are handled by their own area of interest that is not covered by other areas of study. In fact, most topics listed as special for CI and IS are covered by other established scientific journals. Most topics are covered by other disciplines. The data also showed that the same group could not list any analysis that is not used by other areas of study. It shows that a majority of the analyses the respondents think are unique to their study come from the area of strategy and military intelligence. However, this does not mean that CI and IS does not have its own place or niche as a study and discipline. It is suggested here, but further investigation is encouraged, that CI and IS brings a number of unique dimension to the social sciences.
Highlights
What is a good scientific discipline? When is an area of study a discipline? Is the field of Competitive Intelligence (CI) or Intelligence Studies (IS) a proper scientific field of study? These are the questions that this article will attempt to answer.In the literature Prescott and Bharadwaj (1995) define the area of CI as a practice. Wright and Calof (2006) set out to discover the nature of competitive, business and marketing intelligence by a country comparison
Please take a few minutes to reflect on this question: Can you list a number of analyses that you consider to be unique for intelligence studies in business, that is, analyses that are first of all used in intelligence studies
Other sources argue that the first mention of the term SWOT can be traced back to when it was presented to Urick and Orr for the Long Range Planning seminar held in Zurich in 1964
Summary
What is a good scientific discipline? When is an area of study a discipline? Is the field of Competitive Intelligence (CI) or Intelligence Studies (IS) a proper scientific field of study? These are the questions that this article will attempt to answer.In the literature Prescott and Bharadwaj (1995) define the area of CI as a practice. Wright and Calof (2006) set out to discover the nature of competitive, business and marketing intelligence by a country comparison. When is an area of study a discipline? Is the field of Competitive Intelligence (CI) or Intelligence Studies (IS) a proper scientific field of study? In the literature Prescott and Bharadwaj (1995) define the area of CI as a practice. Solberg Søilen (2014) looks at the value a scientific articles on IS for professionals. An analysis of articles published in earlier journals like CIR and JCIM is presented in Solberg Søilen (2013). Du Toit (2015) investigates the extension and trends in the IS literature. She ranks the most published authors and evaluates their work. These three last contributions are part of an attempt to
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