There is a wealth of information relating to economic data, commentary and forecasts which can be analysed to assist with understanding of the Economic drivers. The difficulty lies in making sense from creditable sources of this information. For example, during the recession in the 1990’s, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, did not issue any forecasts indicating that the UK had a shrinking economy (Murphy, 2005, pg 40), thus making it difficult for strategists and analysts to accurately gage or report on the status of the economy. Additionally, the reliability of data is based on the current state of the economy and includes a margin of error due to the delays between collecting and the release of information. Most of the time, this data is out of date when published and is too late to take action.
Environmental
Environmental drivers relate not only to the food and agriculture, energy producing industries within that country, but also factors on a global scale, such as global warming. While some may argue that the environment may have limited value to operating a business, the volatility of weather and inaccuracy of forecasting the weather could impact the retailers, clothes manufacturers and beverage makers. An example of this was when a number of leading technology companies who had their technology centres located in India, suffered major outages due to the country’s unexpected flooding (Europa, 2008).
Industries like utilities, pharmaceuticals, transport and financial services are greatly affected by regulatory changes and issues. Regulations can impact on the participant’s costs, a company’s operational freedom and their profit margins to maintain the required controls (Murphy, 2005, pg 41). An example of this was the constraint that retail shops could not open on Easter Monday under New Zealand Law and if retailers want to open to maintain their competitive strategy, they would be penalised. In recognition, an amendment was established and removed Easter Monday as a restricted trading day (Chemis, 2003).
Utilities are required to comply with a number of controls relating to their prices, profits or dividends. They are greatly affected by changes in environmental legislation and enforcement. In this arena, competitive intelligence can play a critical role with lobbying, anticipate possibilities in the authority’s regulatory position and be able to identify potential risks and opportunities in the business environment.
The practice of competitive intelligence raises serious issues of legality and business ethics.
Considerable debate was generated in America about the ethics of gathering competitive information in 1996. Due to the sheer scale and frequency of industrial espionage, the US government implemented the United States Industrial Espionage Act of 1996. At the time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimated that companies had lost USD $1.5 billion to espionage (Murphy 2005, pg 47). While this law has been implemented, incidents still continue. In 2001, a case of corporate espionage between two rival companies, Procter and Gamble and Unilever occurred.
Procter and Gamble had appointed competitive intelligence agents who allegedly represented themselves as market analysts to collect information about Unilever’s hair care business (Stephens, 2007,b). While the senior Procter and Gamble management informed Unilever once they had discovered the secret operations, the company still faced a sizable settlement and damaged reputation.
Legal and ethical within competitive intelligence has raised questions about what is acceptable behaviour when undertaking competitive intelligence analysis. For these reasons, the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) was created in 1986 to promote the professional and ethical guidelines. An example of these guidelines has been provided in the following SCIP code of Ethics, Vision and Mission statements:
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