The relationship between organizational culture and competitive intelligence performance in the context of Eritrean trade and manufacturing industries

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In our contemporary globalized world, Eritrean enterprises are challenged with high competitionfrom within and from foreign counterparts. Consequently, only those companies that predict thefuture and take proactive decisions can win the game. However, none of these organizationshave applied formal competitive intelligence practice in a proactive, disciplined, and systematicfashion to defend against threats as well as to exploit opportunities, though informally they doengage in the practice.Some of these informal competitive intelligence practicing companies are relatively 'goodperformers' and others are 'poor performers'. The level of this competitive intelligenceperformance is believed to be influenced by organizational culture. This implies that employeeswho are encouraged and trained to have shared values, beliefs, norms and practices are in abetter position to share information and interact with each other with open minds. Here, the freeflow of information is the basic ingredient that helps to produce effective competitiveintelligence.In an attempt to explore if a statistically significant relationship exists between organizationalculture and competitive intelligence performance, a literature study was first carried out to learnfrom other scholars' work. The literature review was then followed by an empirical study. Thisempirical part of the study attempted to investigate if Eritrean manufacturers and traders performinformal competitive intelligence practice as well as if there is a positive relationship betweenthe independent and dependent variables. Data was collected through a questionnaire from toplevel managers. Of the 39 questionnaires distributed, 23 organizations properly completed thequestionnaire. Statistical analysis was then computed using the SPSS package to determine thecorrelations.The relationship between organizational culture and competitive intelligence was determined intwo ways: first, it was correlated in terms of the six selected organizational culture dimensions(employee involvement, human resources, organizational focus, communication flow, reward,and trust) and competitive intelligence; and second, in terms of scores of each firm'sorganizational culture and competitive intelligence. Moreover, the level of the score determinedwhether these companies performed well or not.In both cases a positive relationship was found between organizational culture and competitiveintelligence performance. These results supported the hypothesis that organizational culture doescontribute to improved competitive intelligence practice. Furthermore, the finding suggests thatEritrean firms are doing moderately good in their informal competitive intelligence.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University