Soenke Zehle on Mon, 26 Jan 2004 04:09:02 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> Learning from Al-Quaeda |
Bruce Hoffmann, Vice President for External Affairs, Director of RAND's Washington, D.C. Office, and extraordinarily prolific contributor to the roster of its pubs [1], suggests that we need to learn from the way Al-Quaeda turned itself into a global brand: "Indeed, what bin Laden has done is to implement for al-Qaeda the same type of effective organizational framework or management approach adapted by many corporate executives throughout much of the industrialized world over the past decade. Just as large, multinational business conglomerates moved during the 1990s to more linear, flatter and networked structures, bin Laden did the same with al-Qaeda. Additionally, bin Laden defined a flexible strategy for the group that functions at multiple levels, using both top-down and bottom-up approaches. On the one hand, bin Laden has functioned like the president or CEO of a large multinational corporation by defining specific goals and aims, issuing orders and ensuring their implementation. ... On the other hand, he has operated as a venture capitalist by soliciting ideas from below, encouraging creative approaches and out-of the-box thinking, and providing funding to those proposals he finds promising. ... Al-Qaeda, therefore, deliberately has no single, set modus operandi- which makes it all the more formidable. Instead, bin Laden built a movement that actively encourages subsidiary groups fighting under its banner to mix and match approaches, employing different tactics and varying means of attack and operational styles in a number of locales. Underpinning al-Qaeda's worldwide operations is bin Laden's vision, self-perpetuating mythology and skilled acumen at effective communications." So we better listen up as bin Laden not only rehearses but implements the orthodoxies of neoliberal management and public relations theory. Says Hoffmann. As with many RAND reports (check their earlier pubs on what they call the Zapatista netwar, for example), what intrigues me is the extent to which the semi-sober professionalism of these commentaries betrays a fair amount of respect for the organizations they describe (or perhaps for the very capitalist logic they are thought to exemplify, suggesting that its arch-enemy is in fact its mirror image.) Implications? Not sure. Maybe follow the increasing employment of 'competitive commercial wargaming' as a consulting strategy, which continues to soar in the appreciation of competition-squeezed corporations and does strike me as an appropriate corporate counterpart to the official war on terrorism. [3] But there is more, given that commercial wargaming continues to filter back into military simulation etc., a really interesting circuit [4], sz [1] <http://www.rand.org/news/experts/hoffman.html> [2] Hoffmann, Bruce. "What we can learn from the terrorists?" (16 Jan 2004). <http://www.rand.org/commentary/011604GA/learn_from_al-qaeda.pdf> [3] Oriesek, Daniel F., and Roman Friedrich. "Planspiele: Blick in die Zukunft." Harvard Businessmanager 5 (29 April 2003). [4] <http://www.hyw.com/Books/WargamesHandbook/9-3-wpw.htm> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net