Information Warfare in Business: Strategies of Control and Resistance in the Network Society

Information Warfare in Businessprovides a significant and highly topical perspective on the concept of the network organization. Information warfare covers a diverse range of techniques that are transforming both military affairs and business practice. Both business and military organizations are increasingly reliant upon information technology, and information has become a valuable resource in its own right. Individuals and organizations are increasingly subjected to information warfare attacks and must guard against them. This book outlines the many forms information warfare can take and the various weapons at its disposal - these include high technology approaches like hacking, identity theft and the spread of computer viruses, and low technology approaches such as the use of misinformation and propaganda and the execution of confidence tricks to obtain restricted information. Over recent years non-business organizations (such as Napster and Linux) have emerged that have developed a nomadicstrategy to pursue their aims and resist the power of global multinational corporations. On a political level, such strategies have been employed by protest groups like the Mexican Zapatista rebels. This book also examines the power-relations that are emerging alongside the development of information warfare, using the social theory of Michel Foucault, Paul Virilio, Antonio Negri, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. As we move from disciplinary societies to societies of free-floating networks of control, the means of production for service economies are increasingly orientated around exploiting the employee's minds, their emotions and their interactions with others.