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Phillip C. Wright: Phillip C. Wright is Visiting Scholar, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Geraldine Roy: Geraldine Roy is with the Faculty of Administration, University of New Brunswick, Canada
Introduction
Industrial espionage is not a new topic; the issue has been discussed for more than 20 years. Competitive intelligence, on the other hand, is a more recent concept and, consequently, is often not taken seriously. Indeed, most managers do not realize what is at stake: perhaps the survival of their organization. The problem is that, at best, managers do know that industrial espionage exists and is illegal, but they have difficulties recognizing its new forms and do not necessarily know the difference between industrial espionage and competitive intelligence (CI). The purpose of this paper, then, is to clarify these two concepts and to propose a plan of action from the perspective of the human resource professional, so that managers can protect their organizations from industrial espionage, but take advantage of the opportunities offered by competitive intelligence.
Definitions
Industrial espionage has different names: corporate espionage, economic espionage, industrial intelligence. Some authors do not make any distinction between industrial espionage and competitive intelligence, as they consider the latter as the euphemistic name for industrial espionage (Hill and Michael, 1995). Though separating the two concepts is increasingly difficult, the assumption in this paper is that the distinction lies in legality.
Industrial espionage (IE) is defined in the Annual Report to the US Congress on Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage as "an attempt by foreign governments and/or industry to acquire classified or non-public information from US firms" (Annual Report to Congress, 1995). Similarly, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has defined economic espionage as any action "which can be described as illegal, clandestine or coercive ... by a foreign government in order to gain unauthorized access to economic intelligence, such as proprietary information or technology, for economic advantage" (CSIS/SCRS, 1996). In this paper the term "industrial espionage" will include economic espionage, as an organization needs similar security measures regardless of whether the spy acts for a foreign government, or private industry.
Conversely, competitive intelligence (or business intelligence, a broader term) is defined by the Society for Competitive Intelligence as "timely and fact base data on which management...