Exploring manufacturing companies' effectiveness in Competitive Intelligence, IS support and business change

Abstract

The increase in business competitiveness is forcing manufacturing companies to adopt new technologies to redesign business processes, improve products, and support organisational changes necessary for better performance. The literature on Competitive Intelligence (CI) touts its importance in providing corporate strategic vision to improve company competitiveness and success. To implement their strategic vision (take advantage of strategic opportunities and address problems) manufacturing companies have to implement changes to their business processes, products, and/or to the organisation itself. The voluminous body of literature on the management of change, including sub-areas such as Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Total Quality Management (TQM), and product improvement, implicitly or explicitly propose that company strategic intelligence is a pre-requisite for change, and that effective Information Systems (IS) support is a critical requirement for implementing change. While these two hypotheses are exceedingly important, the existing literature contains no empirical evidence supporting them. Mostly superficial analyses and personal opinions have been published in this basic area. A field test of how effectively business organisations are identifying strategic problems and opportunities, how effectively they implement business changes, and use IS technology to do so, was undertaken to empirically test their relationships. Despite the relatively small sample size, the results provide clear evidence regarding the importance of Competitive Intelligence and IS support for effectively implementing business change. The items used for measuring the main constructs provide further insights into how managers should go about acquiring Competitive Intelligence and managing IS technology to effectively support business improvements.