A field study on competition intelligence in hospitals

Increasing competitive pressures force organizations to achieve competitive advantage to succeed. The competitive advantage of enterprises depends to a large extent on the ability of competitors to recognize strategic movements and sectoral developments in advance. Therefore, it is not possible to obtain competitive advantage without understanding the competitors. It is often difficult to directly reach the intelligence needed to realize the moves of the opponents. This intelligence is mostly achieved through the processing of data collected from various sources. The essence of the study is the investigation of these resources. The aim of the study is to determine the sources of competition intelligence in hospitals, how these data are collected in hospitals, which are the environmental factors that affect competition intelligence activities, what the health managers think about competition intelligence, which purpose the hospitals use competition intelligence and the importance of competition intelligence applications in terms of hospitals. In particular, it is thought that this study will close an important gap in the literature due to the fact that there has not been encountered previous research of competition intelligence in hospitals. In this way, it will also provide support for the need for resources for researchers to work on this issue. In this study, purposive sampling approach is adopted. For the purpose of the study, according to the data of the health statistics published by the Ministry of Health in 2017, the Marmara Region, which has the highest number of population and hospitals, was selected as the sample of the study. Seven of the institutions in this region were reached and interviews were conducted with eight managers in a semi-structured framework using qualitative research method. The questions are designed according to the designated focus points which question the competitive intelligence activities of the hospitals. The factors which are formed in this direction and the relations of these factors with each other are determined by thematic analysis method. As a result of the research, it is found that there is no special intelligence unit in hospitals and this process is informal, intelligence activities are effective in environmental activities, competition intelligence is generally used in tactical decision making, hospitals have sectoral conditions to pay attention to and the intelligence obtained is very important for hospitals.