All of this discussion of covert operations, competitive strategy, corporate intelligence, economic security, economic intelligence, competitive intelligence, and economic warfare brings us back to the case study of the NSA eavesdropping on Thomson Electronics to shift a Brazilian defense contract away from Thomson Electronics toward Raytheon. Where does social responsibility lie in this case?
First, here’s what I said at the lunch table. I said that the coordination between the economic sector and the governmental sector in the US was not at all as tight as it was in France, and my French colleagues were projecting coordinated action onto a situation where there was none. Instead, each firm was acting in its own economic self-interest, and the French were misinterpreting the cumulative effect of profit-seeking at the firm level as a grand conspiracy at the national level. I said that most Americans didn’t even know where France was, so why would they spend all their time trying to overrun it economically? I argued that French firms should respond to American firms, not engineer a French societal response to a presumedly coordinated American societal attack.
I also argued that it seemed that French consultants were fueling an intelligence arms race by misrepresenting the American intelligence threat. Each protest that there was no conspiracy led to new questions about how the conspiracy was structured until, thankfully, other topics emerged for discussion.
Now, though, I would not have been so eager to defend the American point of view.
Instead, I see both sides of the conflict as flawed, self-serving ethical frameworks.
To the French, the Americans have moved from being an ally in a conflict between two blocs, the Soviets and the Americans, to an often-destructive singular
“hyperpower.” The French–as they did with the Germans in World War II–have constructed, enacted, and manufactured an ethical code that allows them enormous flexibility in defending themselves against an invasion by a hyperpower. To use a variety of means to steer the contract toward Thomson Electronics and away from
Raytheon, including the time-honored tradition of offering a secret “pot de vin,” is fair, especially given the enormous advantages of the American cultural barbarians.
To the Americans, the French are just another market to conquer in a firm-by- firm quest for increased market share, increased sales, and increased profits. The stubborn French resistance frustrates the Americans, who complain that the French are exploiting a home-field advantage to skew the outcome of the competition. To use National Security Agency assets to correct an unfair influence from France, and to steer the contract toward Raytheon, is–to American eyes–a justifiable use of national intelligence resources.
How do we solve such an intractable case? We know from research on sense- making processes that human beings interpret ongoing streams of events in ways that reinforce the significance of their own identities, through intensive social discussions with people they work with, and through flawed, outdated, retrospective models (Weick, 1995). Is there any reason to believe that ethics-making is any more rational, objective, or precise than sense-making?
So, no matter how many times we attempt to rule out the chaos of the ethics of competitive intelligence, it will always come down to whether or not individuals can construct an ethical framework that allow themselves to feel good when they look in the mirror. And, in an example of how easy it is for people to feel good when they look in the mirror, 75% of American males think they are in the top 25% of athletic ability. French friends of Thomson look good in their mirrors, and American friends of Raytheon look good in their mirrors, but they are both flawed–one bribes and one eavesdrops, and the battle is only over which is the least unethical course of action.
My conclusion to the case is thus rather skeptical. Although competitive intelligence professionals are well on the road to constructing social responsibility benchmarks within homogenous cultures, the larger problem of international social responsibility benchmarks is going to take a great deal of work, given the enormous forces that encourage local-level construction of benchmarks, rather than global rational benchmarks. I suspect that the greater burden should lie with the economic
“aggressors” who are having the most success, rather than the companies and countries constructing an economic “resistance.” New cross-national case studies should be collected to help find the appropriate balance between nations and corporations in this question for social responsibility benchmarks in the age of competitive intelligence.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This paper was financed by grants from the HEC Foundation (1994-2000) and the UNLV New Investigator Award (2000-2002).
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