Similar to many new study fields where coalescence around the domain and scope has not occurred, there are numerous definitions of competitive intelligence. It would seem that there is no commonly accepted term for referring to internal and external intelligence required for business decision-making. Market (or marketing) intelligence, competitive intelligence, business intelligence and other terms are all used at various times to describe more or less the same concept (Venter & Tustin 2009:89).

According to Campos, Rubio and Quintero (2014), strategic intelligence is used to manage risks in the external environment as an early warning to management. Pellissier and Nenzhelele (2013) define competitive intelligence as the gathering of actionable information about the competitive environment for decision-making. It can be regarded as a system for environmental scanning that integrates the knowledge of all organisational members and encompasses marketing, structural, strategic and other organisational elements (Calof & Wright 2008:717). Within this system there are very specific activities at play, namely the gathering, analysing and distributing of intelligence for the development of an effective business strategy (Du Toit 2015). Xu, Liao and Song (2011) take this definition further by focusing on the role of management as strategic decision-makers to whom the competitive intelligence practitioners should communicate competitive intelligence that was gathered from various sources, analysed and interpreted.

The concept has been studied under various labels since 1960 (Adidam et al. 2012:243). Since then, several publications, including books and academic articles, have been published on marketing intelligence (Adidam et al. 2012; Solberg Søilen 2010). The term ‘environmental scanning’, which focused on how executives ‘scan’ their organisation’s environment, has been used as part of the research on marketing intelligence and market research (Adidam et al. 2012:243; Calof & Wright 2008). Another such label was that of ‘competitor analysis’, associated with Porter (1985). Competitive intelligence was seen to focus on the gathering of competitive data to be used for decision-making (Begg & Du Toit 2007; David 2011; Fatti & Du Toit 2013; Kalinowski & Maag 2012; Kühn 2012; Pellissier & Kruger 2011; Saayman et al. 2008; Strain 2013). It is clear from literature that competitive intelligence has grown in prominence since the early 1980s and a number of works on competitive intelligence have appeared, suggesting that competitive intelligence is a separate function in an organisation and a separate subject field (Fleisher & Bensoussan 2007; Kühn 2012). Competitive intelligence has developed as a distinct field, and the activities have come to serve all business functions (Adidam et al. 2012:243). Porter (1980) reported that while companies were carrying this activity out informally, in his opinion this was nowhere near sufficient. He advocated the need for a structured intelligence process in order to continuously and systematically identify business opportunities and threats. Porter’s work on strategic management and competitiveness created the background for the development of competitive intelligence as a subject field (Porter 1990; Viviers, Saayman & Muller 2005b:578). This is especially important for the emergence of competitive intelligence as a generalised subject field that can contribute to the expansion of the field of strategy as a critical decision-making function within the organisation (Adidam et al. 2012:243; Carter et al. 2008; Sewdass & Du Toit 2014).

During the 1990s, competitive intelligence’s growth was fast paced, but areas such as competitive analysis and its dissemination received less attention than others (Du Toit & Muller 2005:321). The works of Campos et al. (2014), Kühn (2012), and Pellissier and Kruger (2011) emphasised the role of competitive intelligence as a system of activities within strategic management focused on providing actionable intelligence for management decision-making. Research highlighted that individual departments do not share information as part of the strategy formation process within the broader strategic management process (Calof, Marcoux & Robinson 2010; David 2011; Kalinowski & Maag 2012). This view regards strategic management and competitive intelligence as two separate concepts that are competing for prominence in the organisation. In this article, the authors suggest that competitive intelligence should be seen as an integrative practice within strategy as practice.

Some research has the business organisation at centre stage and considers competitive intelligence from the perspective of strategic management (Cuyvers et al. 2008; Saayman et al. 2008). This vein of research focuses specifically on the tasks of a strategic manager to ensure that an organisation achieves a competitive advantage. Cuyvers et al. (2008:85) and Saayman et al. (2008:384) see competitive intelligence as synonymous with business intelligence. According to these authors, competitive intelligence emanates from competitors, customers, suppliers, technologies, environmental intelligence and potential business relationships. This line of research regards competitive intelligence as a critical activity in formulating a strategy that is based on actionable intelligence, but its role as an overarching practice that integrates micro-level activities is not investigated (Cuyvers et al. 2008; Saayman et al. 2008). Competitive intelligence is mostly seen by these authors as a tool in knowledge management and business intelligence and as such is regarded as an activity of tactical nature instead of a strategic practice.

Some authors make a case for the integration between intra-organisational intelligence and extra-organisational intelligence emanating from the social structures of the industry in which the organisation is embedded. The focus in these articles is on the influence of external environmental changes on the competitiveness of the organisation and the need to integrate external environmental information with internal business information for planning purposes (Begg & Du Toit 2007; Calof et al. 2010). This vein of research provides insight into the integrating role of competitive intelligence between extra-organisational and intra-organisational activities but does not explicitly delineate this relationship (Fahey 2007). It does suggest, however, a greater role for competitive intelligence to integrate the strategy process and enhance the practice of strategy.

The research presented in this article serves to highlight the importance of competitive intelligence, not only as an activity within the business functions but as a practice that integrates a variety of activities and contributes to a well-informed, insightful, future-oriented strategy in a significant way. Our research will show that competitive intelligence enhances the strategy process, not only as a set of separate activities but also as a practice within systematic strategy-making that integrates individual activities.

This article will furthermore focus on competitive intelligence from a strategy as practice perspective and will not regard competitive intelligence as an isolated system of environmental scanning, but rather as a high-level strategic practice integrating the strategy process through activities relating to the gathering and interpreting of intelligence from both intra- and extra-organisational sources. However, the article will provide a new perspective not previously discussed in competitive intelligence articles, namely the relationship between competitive intelligence and the practice of strategy. The marriage between process and practice in this research fills a research gap, contributes to the strategy as practice research domain (Langley 2007:272) and contributes to the research agenda in terms of taking a more integrated view on competitive intelligence as an intra- and extra-organisational practice (Whittington 2006:613).

The literature review on strategic management, strategy and strategising establishes the research framework within which to position and conceptualise competitive intelligence. Whittington (1996:731) claims that the field of strategy research has never been as richly diverse as today, nor as crowded with competing theories. According to Nag, Hambrick and Chen (2007:935), strategic management represents a case of an academic field whose consensual meaning might be expected to be fragile, even lacking, and asking strategic management scholars to define the field might elicit an array of responses. However, despite the seeming fragmentation, Nag et al. (2007:936) believe that the field still has a collective identity and distinctiveness due to a strong implicit consensus about the essence of the field, even though there may be ambiguity about its formal definition. Strategic management has always been successful both in practice and as the research field. Nag et al. (2007:952) conclude (based on a distinctive strategy lexicon in 447 strategic management articles, appearing in major management journals) that there is general consensus on the essence of strategic management. Nag et al. (2007) suggest the following definition as portraying the essence of strategic management:

The above definition is especially important to this study for the reference to ‘intended and emergent’ initiatives in the process of strategising. The reference to the internal resources and initiatives/activities as a way to enhance organisational performance within external environments is also important as our research suggests that competitive intelligence plays an integrative role in this regard.

Research in strategy has traditionally been divided into the content and process tradition (Furrer, Thomas & Goussevskaia 2007; Hilse & Nicolai 2004:372). Content research concerns itself with the linkage between performance and market position, resource provision and a host of organisational attributes. Process research, on the other hand, examines the sequential strategic management process, planning methods as well as the traditional strategic management cycle (Lechner & Mueller-Stewens 2002).

From the processual perspective, strategy research is essentially concerned with choice processes (strategic decision-making) and implementation processes (strategic change) (Pettigrew, Ferlie & McKee 1992). In academic literature, strategy process plays out in a dichotomy of processes of which one extreme is the deliberate planning or rational approach to strategising and the other is the emergent approach to strategising (Brews & Hunt 1999; Mintzberg 1985, 1994; Pretorius & Maritz 2011:25). Pettigrew et al. (1992:17) describe strategy in terms of process that does not unfold according to ‘neat logic’ of the more traditional economic strategy research associated with scholars such as Ansoff (1965, 1994) with his seminal work on strategic management (Clegg, Kornberger & Pitsis 2011:137). Here it is important to highlight the distinction between emergent and deliberate processes. Deliberate process is concerned with a rational process of strategy formulation, implementation and evaluation associated with strategy design, positioning and analysis (Mintzberg 1994; Porter 1980; Pretorius & Maritz 2011:25). The emergent approach to strategy is associated with integration between formulation and implementation, where the two phases are not necessarily separated and strategies evolve from day-to-day business activities (Brews & Hunt 1999; Mintzberg 1994; Pretorius & Maritz 2011:25). According to Farjoun (2007:198), organisations should base their strategies on emergent strategy (Mintzberg 1994) and simple rules rather than on the more deliberate, structural approach comprising the positioning model and the resource-based view (Porter 1980) in order to stay more dynamic and be flexible to adjust to required change in their markets. The deliberate approach has been institutionalised in academia and business and remains the dominant approach to strategic thinking – scan the environment, assess your strengths and weaknesses, formulate the strategy, and then go on to secure its implementation (Kay, McKiernan & Faulkner 2006). However, this approach has been challenged for its inflexibility and its inability (unlike the emergent approach) to incorporate learning into the strategy process and adjust to dynamic industries (Liedtka 2001).

Szulanski, Porac and Doz (2005:xiii) attribute the ‘enduring scholarly interest in the process of strategy making’ to ‘the abiding assumption that some ways of strategizing are more efficacious than others, and thus lead to higher firm performance in the long run; higher than luck alone would bring’. It is therefore not surprising that ‘the quest to uncover stable principles of good strategy making has attracted much support of interest over the years’ (Szulanski et al. 2005:xiii).

Finally, strategy as practice has grown as a research field with a new emphasis on organisational theory and strategic management (Vaara & Durand 2012). Strategy as practice has more recent origins, emerging out of a reaction against prevailing assumptions of economic rationality (Johnson et al. 2007; Johnson, Melin & Whittington 2003; Suddaby, Seidl & Lê 2013:330). These economic views of strategic planning depict an idealised ‘rational actor myth’ of strategic decision-making without fully attending to the complex and often convoluted day-to-day processes of decision-making or decision-makers (Jarzabkowski, Balogun & Seidl 2007). The emergence of strategy as practice is in line with the more processual understanding of organisation and management (Suddaby et al. 2013:331).

The authors examined peer-reviewed strategic management and competitive intelligence articles in the database ABI/Inform published between 2004 and 2016 and considered the following terms: business as strategy, business intelligence, competitive intelligence, competitor intelligence, marketing intelligence, strategic intelligence, strategic management, strategy as practice and technological intelligence. These terms were published in the title, abstract or subject fields of ABI/Inform. The authors focused on publications published between 2004 and 2016, to ensure research impact, noting Cooper and Schindler’s (2014) guideline that at least five years’ research should be used for representative analysis.

An extensive literature review was conducted to identify publications on strategic management, strategy as practice and competitive intelligence. Fifty strategic management and strategy as practice and 45 competitive intelligence publications were identified. The authors used the following inclusion criteria for publications:

During the organisation of data phase, the authors analysed the documents and focused on conceptualisation where theories, models and concepts were explored (Leedy & Ormrod 2013). Main issues explored in the articles were grouped. These concepts were written down, connected with lines, grouped, regrouped and explained. Specific competitive intelligence topics emerged. The topics were also evaluated for their contribution to either the deliberate strategising approach or the emergent strategising approach. The authors then critically discussed and interpreted the topics that emerged, explored the themes for representativeness and subsequently evaluated the positioning of the themes within strategy as practice and the process of strategy (Elo et al. 2014:5). These topics were then grouped into overarching themes and organised according to the strategic process steps as depicted by Kay et al. (2006) and strategy as practice, with higher-level practices and associated lower-level praxis.

The final phase of our thematic content analysis was focused on deducing meaning from the themes that emerged by evaluating them within the context of strategy as practice and the strategic process. The focus was on developing a framework to position competitive intelligence within the strategy as practice and process theory. An integrated framework was also compiled, illustrating the integration of competitive intelligence with strategy as practice in the process of strategising. The framework and findings are discussed in more detail below.

This is the enveloping practice of conducting internal and external analyses and environmental scanning. Environmental scanning typically includes competitor analysis and industry analysis as practices. Practitioners are typically competitive intelligence analysts, and employees knowledgeable on the external and organisational environment. Environmental scanning is associated with systematic analysis as part of a deliberate strategy. It is clear from the extended literature review and subsequent content analysis that this theme is well developed within the competitive intelligence research field. A consequent classification of research along the vein of activities grouped in topics below is evident from the literature.

This is a practice that could be associated with the application of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis and systematic analysis of information in the internal and external environment. The practitioners will typically be competitive intelligence analysts as well as strategy and market specialists. Analysis is associated with the deliberate strategy, especially the formulation phase, where a strategy is based on systematic application of analysis tools and techniques. However, this could also be associated with emergent strategising where analysis forms part of a more fluid process but still fosters a mutual understanding of strategic issues and eventually leads to strategic intent.

Themes 3 to 6 seem to have been less well-structured in the literature, although sufficiently covered in research to warrant the combination into themes. That is the reason for topics not being well demarcated and a classification not being as clear as with the preceding themes. This offers a research opportunity in strategy to investigate why less emphasis is placed on competitive intelligence in the formulation of deliberate and emergent strategies, communication and implementation. The literature showed an overall interest in these themes but without the in-depth organisation evident in Themes 1 and 2.

Through combined competitive intelligence praxis and practices of gathering, capturing and analysing information, competitive intelligence serves as an input into the strategy process and strategising. It is also an intricate practice of direction setting, enabling sense-making and strategising within the organisation. The practice of competitive intelligence is used to determine strategic outcomes and priorities. This is a formalised process with sequential steps, such as setting the vision, objectives and selecting strategies (Grant 2015). Practitioners include strategists, consultants or managers. This is typically linked to the deliberate strategy process.

This practice is a comprehensive process of forecasting or simulating probable or possible changes in the marketplace based on a series of observations or analyses and making strategic decisions on reacting to those changes. The practitioners are typically strategists, managers from a variety of organisational functions and top management. The practices stem from a societal focus and from the interplay between intra- and extra-organisational stimuli. Forecasting is associated with the deliberate strategy, while reacting to changes and adapting strategy to changes in the marketplace is associated with a more flexible emergent strategy.

This practice is associated with the discourse around competitive intelligence gathered and communicated, for example workshops. The practice of communicating the strategy and making it explicit in the organisation is typically associated with deliberate strategy. This is also strongly associated with the final step in formulation of strategy and communicating the well-formulated strategy to operationalise the objectives. This practice is also critical in documenting the deliberate strategy process and final strategy.

The final practice in the strategy process is the implementation of a deliberate strategy. This theme also includes references to monitoring and evaluation as the final step in the deliberate strategy process. Literature on the emergent strategy refutes the idea of separate phases of implementation and formulation and argues that strategy may often be operationalised while it is still in the decision-making phase (Mintzberg 1994). However, the practice of implementation is well documented in literature and includes various praxis, such as developing lower-level objectives and implementation frameworks (Kay et al. 2006).

This theme, which is focused on competitive intelligence in decision-making, spans all six other themes as all of the preceding themes and topics involve strategic decision-making. Literature regards decision-making as an entwined process that has an impact on each of the other themes. This is an iterative practice associated with the competitive intelligence process of sourcing information, analysing information and applying information in making strategic decisions. Decision-making is an inevitable part of strategising and sense-making in both the deliberate strategy and the emergent strategy approach. All organisational members involved in any of the associated praxis can be regarded as practitioners.

The content analysis linked strategic management and particularly strategy as practice and process view with competitive intelligence activities.

This research set out to review articles and books published on strategy and competitive intelligence to determine their respective contents in order to answer our research question, namely: What is the position of competitive intelligence within the field of strategy? We conducted a thematic content analysis based on an extended literature review. This article demonstrates that strategy and competitive intelligence are inextricably interwoven and organised in the process and practice perspective. Competitive intelligence is shown not merely to be an activity or sequence of activities within the broader strategic management process, but to be a significant strategic practice.

The findings of the thematic content analysis crystallised into seven competitive intelligence themes. These themes were discussed in relation to the strategy as practice perspective as well as the deliberate and emergent process views. This was depicted in a framework that links competitive intelligence to strategy process and practice.

It was illustrated that there are areas of competitive intelligence that are less well-defined than others, based on the well-defined topics within each of the themes. The dominant focus in existing competitive intelligence literature seems to be on competitive intelligence as an activity on the periphery of strategy. It became clear that most research focuses on competitive intelligence activities as part of environmental scanning, analysis and decision-making (Themes 1, 2 and 7) and less on the eminent positioning of competitive intelligence within strategy development, communication, implementation, monitoring and evaluation (Themes 3 to 6). This opens up opportunities for research in the field of strategy to investigate why less emphasis is placed on competitive intelligence in the formulation of deliberate and emergent strategies, communication and implementation. Our research has highlighted the need for the elevation of competitive intelligence as an area of research interest and more specifically as an overarching strategic practice. This may play a role in practice, where competitive intelligence can be used to supplement and enhance strategising and not only be seen as a supporting and peripheral activity. We conclude on the basis of the content analysis that competitive intelligence is an overarching practice encompassing various key activities (praxis).

Strategy as practice provides a positioning framework for competitive intelligence that shows its significance as integrative practice, integrating extra-organisational and intra-organisational activities within both formulation and implementation phases and within emergent strategy as well as deliberate strategy. Strategy as practice shares the strategy research arena with process research (Langley 2007:272). Langley regards it as important to situate process thinking with respect to the subfield of ‘strategy process research’ and also with respect to the growing ‘strategy as practice’ movement. This article contributes to the strategy as practice field by adding the processual view as a combined research perspective. Vaara and Durand (2012:251) challenge strategy scholars to be mindful of the variety of practices, not only to be able to more effectively analyse major societal issues but also to be able to better understand the challenges of their solution. According to Vaara and Durand (2012) researchers should focus on how strategising is enabled and constrained by prevailing strategic and organisational practices as this would reflect real-life practices that are institutionalised. This perspective is in line with strategy as practice research which emphasises the importance of current strategic practices informing theory (Tsoukas 2010; Vaara & Whittington 2012). This would inevitably lead to a more nuanced understanding of the agency of strategy or strategising that enables the practitioners of strategy through a combination of practices. This demonstrates the importance of developing a framework for the practice of competitive intelligence within the master concept of strategy.

Whittington (2006) implores researchers to understand the origins of practices, which have been illustrated in this article. Competitive intelligence can be regarded as a legitimate integrated practice that links intra-organisational and extra-organisational levels of strategy. As such, competitive intelligence offers a way for all managers to be included in strategy, which is not always the case (Balogun & Johnson 2004; Davis, Jansen van Rensburg & Venter 2014a, 2014b; Whittington 2006). Traditional strategy research focused on the role of top managers and in particular the CEO in making strategic decisions (Ansoff 1965). However, the focus of strategy as practice is on the middle manager as the critical link between operational staff and managerial staff – the latter typically makes the strategic decisions and the former implements the strategies (Davis et al. 2014b; Whittington 2006). This embeddedness in the structure of organisations and the body of research and education as a societal practice emphasises the importance of competitive intelligence within strategy (Whittington 2006), also from a practical point of view.

Seidl and Whittington (2014:3) argue that the practice perspective conceptualises strategy as ‘field of knowledge and power’, which defines the real problems in organisations and the parameters of the real solutions to them. It therefore empowers other actors in the strategising arena (Knight & Morgan 1991). We have shown that competitive intelligence can be used from a practice perspective to enlighten organisational members in terms of strategising. This provides a further research opportunity for exploring actual competitive intelligence practices and solutions at micro-organisational level in more depth and to explore these from a practice perspective. If competitive intelligence is developed and incorporated into the formal strategising process, management can make better decisions. Competitive intelligence has evolved as a critical strategic practice benefitting both the deliberate strategising process and the emergent strategising process. Competitive intelligence has been institutionalised as a significant overarching and high-level strategic practice with associated lower-level practices and praxis in organisations. This is important as a societal practice that is shaped and legitimised through tertiary education courses. In this sense management will benefit from further research and the development of competitive intelligence as integrating practice.

Some limitations to the study should be noted. These include methodological limitations. According to Braun and Clarke (2006:97), thematic content analysis is a flexible method that allows for a wide range of analytic options, which means that the potential range of conclusions about the data can be broad. While this is an advantage, it can also be a disadvantage in that it makes developing specific guidelines for higher-phase analysis difficult and can be potentially paralysing to the researchers trying to decide which aspects of their data to focus on. Our study has been aided in this regard by the use of strategy as process and practice as a research lens. A further disadvantage is that thematic analysis has limited interpretative power beyond mere description. However, in this study the theoretical framework assisted in interpretation, albeit to a limited extent. Future research can investigate the practice of competitive intelligence in strategy empirically to explore the relationship in more detail. It should be pointed out that this study was only exploratory in nature, and, as such, the findings cannot be generalised.

The systematic review of the literature demonstrated that competitive intelligence is a very relevant and current field within strategy as practice that should be explored further for its contribution to emergent or deliberate strategies. Further research could be conducted on the application of competitive intelligence practices in the organisation and their influence on the strategy of the organisation. Case study research could be conducted to explore the field and add more depth and breadth to the study and add to the corpus of strategy as practice research.