Abstract
The concept of competitive intelligence (CI) as a process has long been proposed as an effort to increase a firm's competitiveness and its strategic planning process. The core objective in CI is to predict what is going to happen in an environment and then develop appropriate responses to either take advantage of it or help to shape the environment. Because of the nature of the collecting of information in the CI process and the sphere of competitive rights in which this activity operates, the participants in the process must ensure that they act in accordance with the law. The values enshrined in the Constitution, Act 108 of 1996, are also relevant to this process. They include, among other things, the right to information, to freely participate in the economy and the right to privacy. The law of delict determines when the gathering of information in this process becomes illegal and in particular when it amounts to unlawful competition. The difficulty with the legal aspects of the CI process is that the legality of each and every aspect of the CI process has to be determined in view of the particular circumstances. A thorough knowledge of the legal implications of the CI process is therefore crucial. Such knowledge is to the advantage of the particular business, both in preventing unlawful actions and in utilizing the right to information to its full extent.
Highlights
The Constitution of South Africa Act 108 of 1996, in chapter 2 provides for certain rights that affect the CI process
Section 8(2) of the Constitution stipulates that the Bill of Rights binds natural and juristic persons if and to the extent that a right is applicable, taking into account the nature of the right and of any duty imposed by the right
Section 8(4) provides that juristic persons are entitled to the rights in the Bill of Rights to the extent required by the nature of the rights and the nature of that juristic person
Summary
In 1966, William Fair proposed the formation of a corporate 'Central Intelligence Agency' within the firm whose function it would be to 'collect, screen, collate, organize, record, retrieve and disseminate information'. Since that time, this proposition has grown to become an emerging business construct with delineated job functions directly responsible for intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination (Kahaner 1996). A more appropriate definition of intelligence is 'actionable recommendations arising from a systematic process involving planning, gathering, analysing, and disseminating information on the external environment for opportunities, or developments that have the potential to affect a company’s or country’s competitive situation' (Calof and Skinner 1998). In analysing the varied applications of the intelligence terms in the literature, it may be more appropriate to define ‘competitive intelligence’ as the above process in which relevant information is gathered, analysed and interpreted and in which the resultant intelligence is disseminated to enhance a company‘s competitiveness
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