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CLAUSEWITZ.COM EDITORIAL:
IS BUSINESS "WAR"?
Clausewitz is frequently referred to within the context of
business strategy. For example, Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel,
Strategy
Safari: A Guided Tour through the Wilds of Strategic Management
(New York: The Free Press, 1998) makes intelligent references
to Clausewitz in six separate discussions. There are many other
examples of business theorists drawing on Clausewitz, some interesting
and insightful, others nonsensical. Some other relevant links
are listed below. We don't normally comment on the validity of
any particular reference, unless we are particularly impressed
or provoked.
While many writers say quite bluntly that "business is
war," The Clausewitz Homepage takes the position that
business is NOT war—not even metaphorically speaking. It's
true that politics, business, and war belong to the same broad
class of phenomena, and that there are events within business
that correspond in significant ways to war. Indeed, wars have
actually been waged at times by commercial corporations (think
of the Hanseatic League or the East India Company) for essentially
commercial objectives. For that matter, there have always been
mercenary armies, which are essentially businesses that sell their
military capabilities. But these are very specific instances of
business and war occupying the same space at the same time. In
general, just as war is a particular manifestation or subset of
politics, business analogs to war are subsets of a larger phenomenon—thus,
business as a whole is properly compared to politics, not war.
On the other hand, we've known some business thinkers who
reject the business/war analogy altogether, claiming that business
is about the creation of value, whereas war is pure destruction.
This idea, too, is, in our view, in error. War—at least, when
it is pursued with sense and skill—is about the creation of political
value. Thus politics may involve "creative destruction"
in much the same manner as business obviously does.
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"Clausewitz summed up what it had all been about
in his classic On War. Men could not reduce strategy
to a formula. Detailed planning necessarily failed, due
to the inevitable frictions encountered: chance events,
imperfections in execution, and the independent will of
the opposition. Instead, the human elements were paramount:
leadership, morale, and the almost instinctive savvy of
the best generals.... The Prussian general staff, under the elder
von Moltke, perfected these concepts in practice. They
did not expect a plan of operations to survive beyond
the first contact with the enemy. They set only the broadest
of objectives and emphasised seizing unforeseen opportunities
as they arose. Strategy was not a lengthy action plan.
It was the evolution of a central idea through continually
changing circumstances."
