Craig S. Fleisher

• PhD (Business)
• Professor at Medical College of Wisconsin

Definitions 4-Sets: A conceptual model comprised of four sets of constructs: (1) mindsets, (2) skillsets, (3) toolsets, and (4) datasets. The 4-Sets framework (aka, 4-Sets) is a conceptual model that executives configure. The 4-Sets are used by executives or managers in improving strategic performance through the three-step configuration or sequenc...

This paper explores the development of the field of public affairs (PA) through the observations, research and experiences of two of its most cited scholars, deputy editors, and longtime contributors to the Journal of Public Affairs. We examine how PA and its practitioners have moved non‐linearly from 2000+ PA, to Public Affairs 2.0, toward a still...

Temporal factors such as time and timing are so self‐evident in public affairs that they are rarely mentioned and even less frequently researched. Time is seen as the independent variable—a scaffold that underpins a calendar of communication events, legislative and regulatory processes, or issue lifecycles. However, time is a more complex and essen...

The chapter outlines a comprehensive approach to wellness within organizations that is in confluence with organizational strategic goals.

Public affairs (PA) includes strategic communication (SC) and related management processes enabling organizations to better engage primarily with government and perform in their nonmarket and/or public policy environment. The communication professionals who specialize in addressing nonmarket phenomena are public affairs officers (PAOs). Through usi...

Business strategy means different things to different people. This entry offers a substantive discussion of what is meant by “strategy” and “business strategy”; the different elements of a business strategy; and why top management efforts to craft strategy are aimed at building a competitive advantage that can be sustained as long as possible. A bu...

Background: Though subtle through the years, there has been a perceptible shift in competitive and market intelligence (CMI) practice from that of relying more heavily on sole operators to ones relying on collaboration. It happens within the nature of work performed inside intelligence functions, the larger organisation, and between organisations (...

Current trends suggest that academia may be well “behind the curve” in delivering effective competitive and market intelligence programs and course offerings to students. There are many reasons why this state of affairs has occurred, and prominent among them is nature of challenges experienced by instructors in disseminating and teaching students t...

The anniversary issue of the Journal of Public Affairs is an appropriate time to reflect on decades of developments in the public affairs field and to put ideas into perspective. In this article, I revisit the paper I wrote for the first edition of this journal in which I tried to describe the state of the art of US public affairs practice under th...

It is anticipated that any Competitive Intelligence (CI) professional would want to perform the analysis task and execute their responsibilities successfully over time. Such competencies would normally come with added experience on the job, as should the ability to reduce the risk of failure by diagnosing potential pitfalls. This paper presents: (a...

The study of international public affairs (IPA), and its relationship with strategy, has mostly remained peripheral to the mainstreams of the academic community. Although acknowledged and recognized as important in its own right, IPA never achieved critical mass, evidenced by its relatively rare coverage in top business, management, and organizatio...

This article contrasts teaching methodologies and pedagogical effectiveness in executive development programs delivered in North America and three diverse regions of the world. Based on the authors' collective teaching experience exceeding 40 years encompassing over 24 countries, and augmented by a review of the literature, a theoretical model is p...

The study of international public affairs (IPA), and its relationship with strategy, has mostly remained peripheral to the mainstreams of the academic community. Although acknowledged and recognized as important in its own right, IPA never achieved critical mass, evidenced by its relatively rare coverage in top business, management, and organizatio...

This paper presents the findings of an empirical study of the major UK retail banks, the purpose of which was to investigate, not only how they operate their competitive intelligence gathering activities, but the degree to which they "buy-in" to the information sharing attitude. The findings were applied to a best practice model which provides a cl...

This article identifies the state of competitive intelligence (CI) in Asia—specifically, two of its most prominent economic powers, China and Japan. Comparisons with Western, mainly U.S. practice, are made, particularly where data and management research from those countries supports this approach. In terms of current practice, CI in Japan is more...

The scholarship on total quality management (TQM) has provided little conceptual or pragmatic guidance with respect to the management of its adoption and diffusion throughout the organization. This dearth is especially pronounced with respect to the activities of organizational units which do not produce products to be purchased by customers in the...

Purpose The paper seeks to address the viability of planning and executing the integration of four often independent marketing information management techniques, i.e. competitive intelligence (CI), customer relationship management (CRM), data mining (DM) and market research (MR). Design/methodology/approach The research presented is a longitudinal...

Purpose The paper seeks to show how the increasingly popular use of data and information acquired from open sources (OS) impacts competitive and marketing intelligence (C/MI). It describes the current state of the art in analysis efforts of open source intelligence (OSINT) in business/commercial enterprises, examines the planning and execution chal...

The greatest proportion of Competitive Intelligence (CI) practice in the pharmaceutical industry is located within the R&D function (Halliday et al 1992). This paper reports on the results of an empirical study into the infrastructure of competitive intelligence practice within the industry. The study analyses and reports on the results from data a...

This paper examines the need for developing a public affairs body of knowledge (BOK). It examines the rationale for having a BOK within a larger context of professionalism in the field, identifies parallel developments in affiliated fields that may provide models for public affairs, and offers alternatives for stakeholders of the field to pursue th...

I believe that this book will fill a great need for both full-time competitive intelligence practitioners, and those looking to add analytical skills to their managerial tool kit.” --Bill Fiora, Partner and Founder, Outward Insights “All practicing managers and business decision makers should be grateful to Fleisher and Bensoussan for showing them...

This paper assesses the methodological tools and techniques that analysts use to assess the evolving Innovation, Science and Technology-related (IS&T) factors impacting their enterprise's competitiveness and strategic environment. Studies generally show that a limited set of conceptual tools are regularly utilised by analysts in some enterprises; n...

The tools and techniques of public affairs Corporate public policy management, strategies, and tactics for influencing public policy making continuously evolve. The tools and techniques of public affairs (PA), some of which are state-of-the-art while others are “tried and true” classics, include the activities, functions, practices, processes, and/...

Public Affairs and particularly government relations/lobbying, have evolved in recent years from a tactic adopted by organizations to amend occasional legislation to become a managerial strategy to achieve competitive advantage. At the fore-front of research and practice in Public Affairs, this Handbook draws upon the expertise of leading figures i...

This paper examines the increasingly popular advocacy activity of grassroots management. The success of many US government relations programmes depends heavily on the involvement and support of the organisation's grassroots networks. This paper provides a brief introduction to the grassroots, provides a number of methods for understanding and asses...

This paper examines the place of metrics in the assessment of a corporation's public affairs practice. It describes how public affairs metrics are situated in the larger context of organisational performance assessment, examines the range of metrics available to the CPA practitioner, and identifies the critical trade-offs associated with why public...

This paper provides guidance to managers in the corporate public affairs (PA) community for internationalising their professional development and competency acquisition. It is increasingly necessary that PA managers have competencies in the range of global socio-political matters that impact their organisations. Unfortunately, the provision of this...

Methods and Techniques for Analyzing Business Competition

Book Description Given the priority of competitiveness in modern companies, practitioners of competitive or strategic corporate intelligence (CI) need to come to terms with what business and competitive analysis is and how it works. More importantly, they need to be able to convert the wealth of available data and information into a valuable form f...

This paper examines the place of analysis in corporate public affairs practice. It examines analysis in the larger context of organisational decision making, examines models, tools and techniques available to the CPA practitioner, and identifies factors why analysis has not received the prominence it deserves in the field and beyond. Copyright © 20...

Leading a public affairs department or function in North America has become increasingly complex, difficult, and valued in the last decade. The knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) to perform this role effectively have undergone a transformation and become reflective of the socio-political challenges entailed in the fast-moving, global, informati...

This paper assesses the state of higher education in corporate public affairs (CPA) in North America. Educational offerings in many fields have mushroomed in recent years, and many courses of study are currently available that didn't exist even as recently as a decade ago. Is this true in CPA as well? For the most part, CPA offerings are not as ple...

This paper assesses the state of higher education in corporate public affairs (CPA) in North America. Educational offerings in many fields have mushroomed in recent years, and many courses of study are currently available that didn't exist even as recently as a decade ago. Is this true in CPA as well? For the most part, CPA offerings are not as ple...

This paper provides a review and reflection of Gerry Keim's fine paper on managing US business political activities (BPA). It begins by setting the larger context in which BPA is both practised and studied. It critiques the concept of market-based competition and extends it by suggesting that non-market competition can take on a myriad of forms dep...

To understand corporate public affairs from a professional or academic perspective, it is important to understand its origins and its development. The authors have culled the literatures of corporate public affairs, political strategy, issues management international public affairs, community relations and political involvement activities (includin...

The need to strategically manage public policy developments affecting business requires a broadened role for competitive intelligence. Public policy competitive intelligence (PPCI) can provide early warning of threats and opportunities that affect company strategy and allow decision makers to take appropriate action such as working to create, chang...

Many larger US corporations are re-assessing their participation in the public policy process and their entire approach to managing public affairs. This paper will attempt to synthesise much of what is happening to US corporate public affairs. It describes the forces driving the changes and addresses the ways corporations are responding to these fo...

For specialists and nonspecialists alike, this perceptive selection of the newest and up and coming tools and techniques of competitive intelligence, offering a well balanced combination of theory and practice. It shows how advances in computers and technology have accelerated progress in CI management, and the ways in which CI has affected (and be...

This paper examines the evolution of two separate fields, which are essentially concerned with the same issues but are framed by different academic and professional disciplines and practice. It appears that public affairs management researchers often fail to take into account parallel literature from the discipline of public relations — even when p...

This study of leading Canadian corporate communication (CC) departments indicates that a majority had not integrated CC management and strategic planning systems. CC concerns were generally only implicitly discussed during top-level planning meetings and CC matters were included mostly as background information in strategic plans. The practice of s...

This article describes a new managerial approach to assessing Public Relations/Communications (PR/C) performance using a balanced scorecard. The balanced scorecard requires PR/C executives to develop a set of audience/client/ stakeholder, financial, improvement, and operational/process performance measures that reflect progress against a plan. More...

Benchmarking can be used to improve competitiveness in areas other than marketplace performance. Moreover, benchmarking of specific internal processes can be performed at the department or subunit level, focusing on corporate staff functions rather than traditional line functions. In this case study, the authors describe the internal-process benchm...

The authors identify the value chain as a valuable management tool in building a corporate reputation. Examples of beneficial effects of value chain links on the company's reputation are presented using programmes from Levi Strauss.

Benchmarking corporate communications/public relations (CC/PR) is an increasingly useful approach used by some CC/PR managers to demonstrate the “value” of their activities to sceptical organizational executives. This article describes a series of independent observations of a number of proprietary CC/PR benchmarking efforts which have been perform...

An examination of Comprehensive Organizational Wellness as a framework for a strategic human resources approach. This paper won the "Best Paper" designation.

The holistic aspect of total quality management (TQM), whereby the entire organization adopts and pursues the paradigm, is becoming increasingly important as organizations progress in their quality efforts. Based on empirical research findings, this paper presents a progressively phased learning and developmental model of TQM adoption in a corporat...

This paper discusses the adoption of quality management programmes and techniques within the corporate public affairs function. Although total quality management programmes and techniques are being rapidly assimilated within organizational production and operations areas, they are adopted much more slowly in “softer” organizational areas. The conte...

Corporate external relations refers to relationships between organizations and stakeholders/issues in the public policy (i.e., non market/sociopolitical) environment. This article focuses specifically on public affairs, widely considered to be the most pervasive and significant corporate external relations mode. A helpful way of understanding the r...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pittsburg, 1992. Includes bibliographical references (p. 312-331). Photocopy.

In order to understand competitive intelligence and management from an academic or professional perspective, it is important to recognize its origins and development. By drawing upon various literatures predominantly in competitive intelligence, management, marketing, policy, and strategy, it has been possible to create a wide ranging bibliography....

It ought to be a fairly safe assumption that a CI analyst would want to perform the analysis task and execute their responsibilities successfully over time. Such competencies should come with added experience on the job, as should the ability to reduce the risk of failure by diagnosing potential pitfalls. This paper presents a) a unique four-level...

Obra en la que se aborda cómo las personas en las organizaciones pueden manejar datos e información para una futura toma de decisiones. Incluye 24 métodos aplicados con los que se pude hacer un análisis competitivo de la propia empresa para ayudar a generar recomendaciones para las personas que toman las decisiones.