Small Business Solutions: Building and Leveraging a Competitive Intelligence Capability Without Going Broke

The interest in and use of Competitive Intelligence (CI) programs is increasing among small businesses. While small businesses/ace certain limitations in terms of resources, staff, time, and expertise, they are still able to design and utilize a Cl program  that will address their unique challenges and needs. This article presents a framework and set of guidelines that can be used by small businesses interested in designing or strengthening their competitive intelligence (Cl) program

Business information literacy teaching at different academic levels: An exploration of skills and implications for instructional design

This study investigates the difference among students' discipline-specific information literacy (IL) skills by studying first-year and final-year undergraduate business students. An online IL tutorial was designed and delivered to both student groups with a two-fold goal. First, the researchers wanted to compare students' IL skills to test the faculty's assumptions that business students who are about to graduate have already acquired the requisite IL despite the lack of mandatory business-specific IL sessions. The findings suggest that first-year and final-year business students are not significantly different in their performance and that both groups received a significant positive impact as a result of taking the same IL tutorial online. Second, the study analyses how well the online IL tutorial, with its focus on combining instructional videos with active learning exercises, performs in delivering content related to different elements of IL, as defined by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL 2010). The findings indicate that the online IL tutorial is more effective for some skills than for others, suggesting that it will be beneficial to explore different instructional designs in collaboration with the departmental faculty to improve the current IL tutorial in these areas.This study adds to research on the effectiveness of online tutorials and raises questions related to their design. The findings can inform librarians' decisions on how to design online learning targeting students from different academic levels

Financial Analysts and Enron: Asleep at the Wheel?

We attempt to replicate the duties of financial analysts by performing accounting and financial analyses for Enron, using information contained in the firm\u27s Security and Exchange Commission filings and in annual and quarterly reports that were available to analysts prior to the firm\u27s collapse. We focus on Enron accounting policies, estimates, and financial measures that reflect the key risk areas that we identified in our strategy analysis. Given that the purpose of accounting analysis is to evaluate the degree to which a firm\u27s accounting system captures its underlying economic reality, we attempt to assess the degree of distortion in Enron\u27s reported numbers, based on our comfort level with management\u27s choice of accounting policies and estimates. The purpose of our financial analysis is to assess the performance of the firm after its efforts to negate the effects of perceived distortions in the reported numbers. We ask, and attempt to answer, the question of whether financial analysts should have seen warning signs of Enron\u27s collapse and should have warned investors of the firm\u27s precarious financial situation long before the unfortunate event surprised stockholders and creditors alike. Our detailed analyses show that from 1997 onward there was evidence of reporting and performance problems. We highlight areas of major concern about profitability and debt levels. Although Enron management makes an abundance of information available to analysts, the language is not always clear; it is confusing even to accounting experts. The vast amount of information makes the analyst\u27s job time consuming and tedious, yet essential information, such as separate disclosures of unrealized gains on trading activities, is not available. This does not, however, excuse analysts who overwhelmingly would not see the woods for the trees, and who continued recommending to clients that they buy or hold Enron stock. Our investigation shows that the red flags were plentiful and that the situation was aggravated by the incidents of apparent disdain (reported in the news media) with which Enron\u27s top management dealt with financial analysts. The results of our accounting and financial analyses raise issues about the competence, independence, and objectivity of analysts who continued to recommend this stock

Journal of Information Literacy Business information literacy teaching at different academic levels: an exploration of skills and implications for instructional design

"By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited." Abstract This study investigates the difference among students" discipline-specific information literacy (IL) skills by studying first-year and final-year undergraduate business students. An online IL tutorial was designed and delivered to both student groups with a two-fold goal. First, the researchers wanted to compare students" IL skills to test academic staff"s assumptions that business students who are about to graduate have already acquired the requisite IL despite the lack of mandatory business-specific IL sessions. The findings suggest that first-year and finalyear business students are not significantly different in their performance and that both groups received a significant positive impact as a result of taking the same IL tutorial online. Second, the study analyses how well the online IL tutorial, with its focus on combining instructional videos with active learning exercises, performs in delivering content related to different elements of IL, as defined by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL 2010). The findings indicate that the online IL tutorial is more effective for some skills than for others, suggesting that it will be beneficial to explore different instructional designs in collaboration with academic staff to improve the current IL tutorial in these areas. This study adds to research on the effectiveness of online IL tutorials and raises questions related to their design. The findings can inform librarians" decisions on how to design online learning targeting students from different academic levels

Errors Small Business Managers Make in Product Introduction Decisions: What Were They Thinking?

One of the most important strategic decisions managers of small businesses make is deciding what products to introduce. Introducing the right product can improve firm performance. Introducing the wrong product, or even the right product at the wrong time can result in large losses and possibly jeopardize a firm's longevity. It is especially important to examine small firm managers ' product introduction decisions because they often use less formal procedures, have more power and face less organizational inertia. Thus, while their autonomy may allow them to act on their conclusions more readily, a lack of formality may generate  more judgment errors. Therefore, it's vital to understand the issues that should be considered in new product introductions and explore some of the common misperceptions small firm managers have regarding these issues.Toward this end, this study examined the success factors (component conditions that are prerequisites for the introduction's overall success) managers considered during recent new product introductions and their confidence in these factors' achievability. In an effort to determine where managers might be making their most critical decision errors, the authors also examined which success factors were the most difficult to achieve and which were most critical to overall product performance