Business intelligence and competitive intelligence in brazilian information science: contributions to an analysis terminological

Abstract The article presents aspects of diversity terminology related to Business Intelligence and Competitive Intelligence in the scientific production of the Brazilian Information Science, characterizing occurrences of polysemy and synonymy and seeking to contribute to reducing the ambiguity of the conceptual field. We analyzed 29 articles of 101 found in BRAPCI basis. These articles were extracted from 40 concepts, which were submitted to analysis as a) the terms and concepts of reference, (b) the categories Process, Function, Product or Technology, and c) association of authors by concept of reference. The results show that: (a) confirm the existence of the phenomena of polysemy and synonymy, (b) although the term Competitive Intelligence has been predominantly adopted by the authors, (c) predominance of process category, (d) dispersion of senses in chronological analysis, not protruding predominance of one or the other concept referential and e) technology category is concentrated in publications between 1999 and 2001. It is concluded that, in view of the fragility terminology found in this survey, it should be a more in-depth analysis of these terms and concepts by checking its behavior in areas related to the studied here, which certainly would show other aspects of diversity terminology.