Case Study: An enthusiastic (perhaps, some would say, overzealous) information manager at a financial services consultancy offered to get hold of commercially sensitive information from the firm's competitors.  In this highly competitive and secretive sector such information would never knowingly be made public, lest it provides competitive advantage for others.  The information manager knew that the only source of such information was from the competitors themselves - he would never find it in any online database or trade directory.  He considered the possibility that he may have been able to glean the information through sophisticated competitive intelligence techniques such as analysis of competitors' recruitment advertising, monitoring competitors' patterns of attendance at conferences, and the careful elicitation of marketing ideas from individual competitors whom he was likely to meet at conferences or trade shows.

Keen to show initiative, the information manager recruited an undergraduate student of library and information studies (LIS).  The student was in the penultimate year of studies and was legitimately planning to undertake fieldwork for a final-year dissertation.  Although she had chosen to investigate a different topic, she was happy to pose as a student investigating the marketing plans of the financial services consulting sector.  The information manager supplied the student with the contact details of the principal competitor firms and gave her a set of prepared letters to send to these firms.  He had included her university's LIS department address to legitimise the letters in the competitors' eyes.

Within a week of posting the letters to competitors, the student began to receive packages of information at her university address.  After approximately one month the student had received information from nearly all the competitors.  She delivered this to the information manager and received a financial reward for her efforts.

The editors comment...

In the present case we can cite a number of issues in which actions are ethically remiss.

First, the information manager made a conscious decision to use pretext to obtain information which he knew to be commercially sensitive and not likely to be made public by the competing firms.  Had he been a completely inexperienced information professional who did not appreciate the value of the competitive information he was seeking then one might argue a case for inappropriate but excusable behaviour.  However, we note that he works for 'one of the UK's largest' financial services consultancies.  Arguably such an organisation ought to have some resources to avoid the need to employ a student unethically, and almost certainly will appreciate the dangers of behaving so unethically.  Using pretext in any competitive intelligence process is considered to be unethical (though not necessarily illegal) by the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP).  Whereas SCIP's Code of Ethics 'expects CI professionals to accurately disclose their identity prior to all interviews ... [what] about disclosing your identity but not your motives? One is not under a legal duty to disclose his motive or purpose' (Horowitz, 1998, 33).

Moreover, the information professional recruited an undergraduate student who may well not have fully appreciated the ethical and possibly legal consequences of her actions.  This is clearly not the impression a mature member of the information profession ought to give to a less experienced and impressionable aspiring member.

Thirdly, we note that most of the competitors willingly supplied the marketing information requested, apparently, by a student.  We do not know whether those who responded were information or marketing or other professionals, but we may assume that they did not appreciate the potential damage that releasing such commercially sensitive information might cause their firms.  Their unwitting abrogation of commercial responsibility may be likened to carelessness.  It also provides a good example to the corporate librarian who may be tasked with responding to such student enquiries to exercise caution.  In the absence of a clear corporate policy in such cases, the librarian may fancy that he or she is supporting the poor student - a worthy attitude.  On the other hand, the librarian must consider duty to one's employer and, in the case of the financial services consultancy, to the firm's partners and their clients.  The loss of reputation from carrying out such an unethical exercise using pretext may be significantly greater than the value of the competitive intelligence gained.

The information manager in the present case may get credit for having supplied his employer with competitors' secrets, but it is at the expense of wider ethical responsibilities.  Perhaps a more appropriate choice of action would have been (a) to employ the LIS student on ethical fact-finding using quantitative data analysis or similar techniques (which also profitably supports the student's exposure to a variety of tools and techniques in the information profession), (b) to remind the consultancy's partners that the actions proposed are unethical at best and could damage the firm's reputation, and (c) to recommend the adoption of recognised formal methods in competitive intelligence which, if successful, could lead to greater professional opportunities for the information manager and greater competitive advantage for the consultancy.

Created: v0.9 17-Feb-07 : JG-T

Revised: v1.0 14-Feb-07 : JG-T