Hi John,

Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
Historically, it has been business thinkers who have appropriated military terminology while rarely internalizing or even comprehending the concepts. This is often seen in what business calls "strategy" which they seem to think has something to do with planning for quarterly profits.
I'll beg to differ on this - the original relationship, at least in the modern world, was the other way; business to the military. It really starts with the Dutch in the 16th century and the application of manufacturing processes,particularly interchangeability and standardization, to producing civil militias that could fight the Spanish. It really goes into high speed in the late 18th century / early 19th century with the centralization of military logistical production (especially cannon balls) and with Napoleon's integration of civilian and military production.

I think, although I could easily be wrong, that what you are referring to is the application of the General Staff model to business organization with the development of FW Tyler's Scientific Management and the rapid spread of Fordist production techniques. That's certainly when we start to see large amounts of military rhetoric and terminology appearing in the business literature. I've also found it fascinating that most business authors and practitioners know so little about their original impacts on the military.

As far as your point about business "getting the concepts", you are totally right and I couldn't agree more. Even worse, over the past 25 years or so, the model of "military" that appears to have been adopted by business is closer to that of the "military" after the fall of the Minoan Empire. Look at the terms used: "raiders", "acquisitions", "pirates", etc. On the whole, few of them seem to have the same time horizon as the military (BTW, this is also seen in the use of the term "consumer" rather than "customer" in terms of relationship).

Marc