Abstract:
Although it is widely agreed that business intelligence (BI) plays an important role to
ensure that information is available consistently and disseminated to organisational
decision-makers, many authors point out that there is little agreement in the literature on
a common defi nition of BI. This is not unusual for a fi eld that is still being established,
but a shared understanding would contribute to advancing the fi eld. For this research,
defi nitions of Pirttimäki (2007) and Chee et al. (2009) were used to identify a priori
themes that are used to qualitatively analyse a selection of 27 BI defi nitions by researchers
from the academia and industry, in order to derive an integrated descriptive framework
of BI. Consequently, the implications and limitations of the defi nitions and the resulting
descriptive framework are discussed. It is hoped that the framework can contribute
to increase the shared understanding and counter the confusion arising from multiple
defi nitions found in the literature. The descriptive framework also provides researchers
with categories and descriptors for use in future qualitative research. Through further
research, the framework and descriptors can be confi rmed, expanded and refi ned by
independent confi rmation of coding, comparing further defi nitions to the framework, and
by using the Delphi method to consult a panel of experts.
