Business leaders often look to warfare for business strategy. Sun Tsu’s The Art of War is a business classic, quoted by everyone from The Drucker Institute to Tony Soprano. So I’ve been thinking about how this war-business connection fits into both traditional managerial reporting and moral accounting.
I came across a useful case study on this question as part of my preparation for the Cambridge Disinformation Summit. (I’m on the advisory board and editor of the Journal that will publish papers coming out of it). From an article on the Russian theory and practice of Reflexive Control:
Reflexive control is a “uniquely Russian” concept based on maskirovka, an old Soviet notion in which one “conveys to an opponent specifically prepared information to incline him/her to voluntarily make the predetermined decision desired by the initiator of the action”.[ii] That is, reflexive control is a sustained campaign that feeds an opponent select information so that the opponent makes the decisions that one wants him/her to. Methods of reflexive control include spreading false information, leaking partial information at opportune moments, and projecting a different posture of oneself than what may actually be the case.[iii] The goal of reflexive control is to ‘control’ the ‘reflex’ of the opponent by creating a certain model of behavior in the system it seeks to control.[iv] The most fundamental way to do this is to locate the weak link in the system and exploit it through moral arguments, psychological tactics, or appeals to specific leaders’ character.[v]
Reflexive control relies heavily on the part of accountability systems called controls: elements that make some behaviors easier and others harder. That makes it right at home in a traditional managerial accounting course, which is more focused on being effective at shaping behavior, not doing so in a moral way. Businesses use practices pretty similar to reflexive control all the time–trying to look stronger than they are, using moral arguments and appeals to characters to shape the behavior of employees and customers, and standing ready to exploit weaknesses. You can bet that as soon as you search the internet for what ails you, you’ll see ads targeting your weakness!
The US uses something a lot like reflexive control. From a pro-Ukrainian organization, these distinctions:
The Western counterpart of the “reflexive” approach is a famous perception management theory. Documents of the United States Department of Defense define “perception management” as actions taken against “foreign audiences”. It constitutes a substantial difference between their view and the one of their Russian colleagues. Kremlin actively applies reflexive control techniques both geopolitically and internally – to influence its own population. Moreover, American approach implies that the opposing side is also a subject, while the Russian military talk about it as an object. Technologies of reflexive control are implemented regardless of the state of relations with a country. It means that those considering themselves to have a good relationship with Russia are targets of reflexive control special operations as well.
I’ll close with some questions I’ll leave others to answer: How well do reflexive control and perception management uphold moral accounting’s principles (The MAP)? Does either approach violate more principles, or violate them more severely, when used by a company on its employees? On its customers? Why or why not?