National Security Intelligence and Business Intelligence: A Comparative Analysis

Being one of the most important assets in governmental organizations and private companies, intelligence became a subject of interest for both researchers and practitioners in the last decades. In the literature, the concept of “intelligence” has got many meanings and interpretations, like psychological intelligence, emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence, social intelligence, organizational intelligence, business intelligence, competitive intelligence, and national security intelligence. The core meaning of all these different specialized concepts remains the same: the capacity of processing data, information, and knowledge. Their differences come from the context in which these processes operates and the mission of the organizational structures which perform these specific processes. Business intelligence and competitive intelligence are characteristics of private companies, while national security intelligence is characteristic for the state-owned institutions. This paper aims to present a comparative analysis between business intelligence and national security intelligence based on a critical literature review and adopting a knowledge management perspective. The value of the present paper comes from the semantic tool used in our comparative analysis and the perspective of knowledge management adopted.