Ethics and the use of competitive information acquisition strategies

Several business trends have forced accelerated efforts to acquire competitive intelligence. While coverage of business ethics in classroom instruction has accelerated, concerns over unethical competitive information acquisition strategies persist. The frequency of use by individuals, their companies, and their competitors is assessed, and the findings reveal the extent of this ethics gap.Richard F. Beltramini is Associate Professor of Marketing and Advertising at the Department of Marketing, College of Business, Arizona State University. At the moment he is Research Fellow at the Center for Private and Public Sector Ethics. He has published a number of articles in marketing and advertising journals and proceedings.