Designing a Model for Measuring Organizational External Intelligence: An Approach to Competitive Intelligence

Abstract

Nowadays, organizations need the tools which identify,gather and analyze the required information from the externalenvironment in order to use the obtained intelligence in makingstrategic decisions. In this regard, the organizational externalintelligence provides the analyzed information for the organizationaldecisions. Despite the effectiveness and importance of these tools (i.e.the organizational external intelligence), a model for measuringorganizations’ performance with regard to organizational externalintelligence has not been designed yet. This study is an appliedresearch and a qualitative survey. The collected data was analyzedusing factor analysis methods and structural equation modeling. Thefindings of this study indicated that organizational externalintelligence was measured through environmental intelligence(technological intelligence, political-logical intelligence, economicintelligence, ecological intelligence and social-cultural intelligence)and market intelligence (suppliers’ intelligence, distributors’intelligence, customers’ intelligence and competitors’ intelligence).Moreover, the selected organizations were reported to have amoderate level of intelligence regarding external factors.

Keywords

• Competitive Intelligence
• External Environment Analysis
• information resources
• Organizational External Intelligence