Introduction: Businesses in a Time of Terror

In the previous chapter I set out the conditions for being a witness and a victim of contemporary terrorism in places both near and far from terrorism’s ‘flashpoint’. It may be that these four coordinates – witnesses and victims, simulations and images of violence, distance, and cities – go some way to explaining the targets that terrorists choose, the goals of their political message, and what it means to live and work in the city in a time of terror. Building on these coordinates, my intention in this chapter is to lay out the coordinates for understanding businesses and organizations in a time of terror and pave the way for the outcomes of research that I present in Chapters 4–6. The coordinates for businesses and organizations represent intersecting narratives. The narratives represent the intersections between international terrorism, workers, and management and security.

These narratives broadly correspond with how terrorism emerges as a threat to business – international terrorism is the problem; all workers (including managers and business leaders) bear the consequences; and the role of managers and security managers is to organize and deliver the responses.

Working people and businesses are at home in the city. The city is a place to which people flock to benefit from the social, cultural and employment opportunities that organizations in cities provide. In this chapter I explore the consequences and meanings of terrorism for businesses, organizations and workers. I take some lead in this endeavour from the limited existing literature that examines the business consequences of terrorism. This literature, a large segment of which was prepared by leading scholars in the terrorism studies cannon but whom are painfully unaware of a variety of crucial managerial and business concerns, is useful for its insight into potentially fruitful areas for research and analysis. Yet this literature is little more than a glimpse – a tiny and fragmentary acknowledgement of a multi-layered problem that promises enormous consequences yet lacks an analytical and critical depth of understanding. I do not dispute the consequences but I seek to address the lack of critical depth in this chapter.

A number of studies have explored the meanings and consequences of terrorism from the perspective of the city and urban landscape (as explored in Chapter 2). Other studies have attempted to deploy ‘disaster management’ models for understanding terrorism and work (Fischer III, 2002, 1998a, b; Mankin and Perry, 2004). Research that explores the consequences of terrorism for businesses and workers remains desperately lacking. This existing research is also deficient for its lack of interest in the human consequences of terrorism. The emotional and psychological costs to working people, who are the terrorists’ chosen witnesses and victims, can be demoralizing. It is my contention in this chapter that visible signs of security improvement – whether simulated or fortress building – can be vital for maintaining security for those who work and live in the city. While some authors who explore the meanings of terrorism for businesses devote some attention to the emotional and psychological consequences of terrorism for working people (Alexander and Alexander, 2002; Alexander, 2004; Alexander and Kilmarx, 1979; Ackerman, 2008; Committee on Government Reform, 2006), for the most part these authors are preoccupied with questions of security cost, business continuity and maintaining productivity during times of terror (ironically with little thought to how workers may contribute to this goal). Sometimes these same authors see working people as a hindrance to high-quality security rather than a vital ally in times of terror. I suggest that any change or improvement to business counter-terrorism preparedness can only be successful if it is integrated into the day-to-day routine and even banal habits of workers, managers and business leaders. Counter-terrorism should not be treated as something separate to core business, a nuisance or an unnecessary burden – to respond to terrorism in this way may lead to disaster. I suggest that counter-terrorism should be seen by business leaders and managers as part of everyday functioning and good corporate citizenship.

Narratives of International Terrorism

Since 9/11 people have been given different versions, different realities, and different explanations for why it occurred, what we should do and how we should live. As I sketched out in the introductory chapter of this book, the terrorism of 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7 has had extraordinary consequences throughout the world that have ranged from international war, torture, the curbing of civil liberties and populations of witnesses and victims living in fear and terror. In the post-9/11 world, it is perhaps difficult to not think about the worst-case scenarios. Witnesses and victims are only too aware that the terrorism in New York, Washington DC, Madrid and London may only be the beginning of a much broader terrorist campaign that will see cities throughout the world targeted again and again. For people who run, manage, and work in businesses and organizations that make their home in the city, this awareness takes on different dimensions. For these people terrorism is not only an attack on democracy or freedom as former US President George W. Bush believed. It is also an attack on the everyday life of the worker. The following headlines in newspapers in the US immediately following 9/11 illustrates what terrorism means for some people in business:

• Business Grinds to a Near-Halt After Terrorist Attacks.
• Does a Disaster Await Markets?
• Attacks Trigger Nationwide Office Evacuations.
• Attacks Cast Shadow over Boardrooms.
• World Bank, IMF May Cancel Meetings.
• Overseas Stocks Plunge.
• Wall Street Comes to a Halt.
• Fed Ready to Support Banks.
• Exxon, Chevron Freeze Gas Prices.
• Wall Street Fears for Employees.
• Telecom Networks Stressed, but Operating (Alexander and Alexander, 2002: xvii).

Encoded within these media headlines is a broad-spectrum account of the consequences and meanings of terrorism for businesses and workers. These consequences and meanings relate to business continuity, the attitudes and behaviours of stakeholders, the attitudes and behaviours of employees and managers and the emotional and physical well-being of workers, customers and visitors in city spaces. The problem, according to Marren (2002: 20), is that the way we all viewed the world on 10 September 2001 was not the way we viewed the world on 11 September 2001. Our ability to think about the unthinkable and confront danger and risk in everyday ways emerges directly from how we view our world. But throwing out old ways of thinking and ushering in the new is never easy and it may be especially difficult for ‘business strategists’ who must convince employees and managers, customers, shareholders, law-makers, regulators and a host of other stakeholders that the most productive steps are being taken and that the appropriate balance between security and conducting business will be reached. This task requires careful planning, imagination, calm and unhysterical analysis and, most importantly, the best information about the meaning of terrorism and its consequences.

But this section is not designed to detail the history of when terrorists have targeted workers and businesses. Rather, I intend to demonstrate how three particular acts of contemporary terror – 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7 – hold special significance for working people and businesses in a world that can be indefinitely defined as ‘post-9/11’. I do not mean to suggest that the targeting of businesses, organizations and their workers by terrorists is something new or recent. But to properly account for the complexities of the problem of terrorism for businesses my analysis must extend beyond a mere history of times when terrorists successfully carried out attacks against business interests. This is because the threat posed by terrorism to businesses is not limited to explosions, devastation and death. I argue that in the course of everyday life and work in the city, terrorism is most felt when nothing explodes.

To explain what I mean by this, we need to examine the multiple meanings of the word ‘terrorism’. In one sense, terrorism is a violent political tactic designed to influence governments, persuade populations and disseminate – usually through the mass media – a political message through violent symbolic and attention-seeking attacks (Laqueur, 1999, 2003; Whitaker, 2007; Williams, 2004). In another sense, terrorism is an emotional response to shocking and horrific events – events that defy belief, calculation and understanding (Horgan, 2005; Riech, 1998; Baudrillard, 2002; Žižek, 2002). These different perspectives share one crucial characteristic – terrorism exists wherever terror is felt. Understanding this distinction – or perhaps this is best described as a continuum between different terrorisms – is crucial for knowing how to respond to terrorism as both a political tactic and an emotion. These differing conceptions of terrorism have radically different meanings and consequences. If terrorism is defined as a political tactic, then it is best understood by exploring what happens when bombs are detonated, infrastructure is destroyed and when people are maimed and killed. If terrorism is defined as an emotion, then it is best understood by exploring what happens when bombs are not detonated, when infrastructure is not destroyed and when people are not killed, but when people live with the possibility of devastating violence changing their lives at any moment and without warning.

Overwhelmingly, businesses have responded to only one kind of terrorism – the type that emphasizes physical acts of political violence. This response has often resulted in the emotional and psychological consequences of terrorism being mostly ignored or treated as a secondary concern. The impact of terrorism on businesses was the focus of two books written after 9/11. In Dean Alexander and Yonah Alexander’s (2002) Terrorism and Business: The Impact of September 11, 2001 the authors examine the impact of 9/11 on the economic functioning of businesses. Alexander and Alexander (2002: 123–152) spend one chapter examining the impact on ‘US Labor’. For the most part, however, this book fails to account for the human consequences of terrorism focusing instead on a variety of strategic and functional dilemmas that have emerged from the economic consequences of the attacks. As the authors argue:

Alexander and Alexander (2002: 23–24) note that unemployment sharply rose following 9/11. It was estimated that between 11 September and 7 November 2001 around 250,000 jobs were cut by prominent US companies. In some sectors, including hospitality and tourism, many businesses went into short-run economic shutdown.

Similarly, in Dean Alexander’s (2004) Business Confronts Terrorism: Risks and Responses, the focus remains on the economic and financial systems and networks in the aftermath of 9/11. Alexander (2004: 145) writes of the initial consequences of catastrophic terrorism: ‘The initial economic impact of the 9/11 attacks was acute and negative, exemplified by: substantial declines in stock markets and, thereby, the value of public companies (e.g. airlines, travel businesses, and insurance); and closure of stock and bond markets for several days due to damage near those locations’.

As I discuss in greater depth later in this chapter, in focusing on the economic consequences of only one type of terrorism – the type that relates to political violence – the emotional and psychological consequences for workers are treated as secondary consequences of terrorism. I argue, however, that emotional and psychological consequences should be brought to the foreground in understanding terrorism because without precarious and vulnerable witnesses and victims, terrorism would not be very successful in inspiring fear in a targeted population. More attention needs to be focused on terrorism as something that inspires fear and anxiety and a variety of other psychological and emotional responses.

The different conceptions of the meaning of terrorism that I have outlined require very different responses. Responding to terrorism as a violent act can best be accomplished by improving the physical parameters of security through increasing the numbers and quality of security staff, improving entry-point security for organizational and public spaces, training people in security awareness and facilitating movement towards fortification of business and city spaces. Responding in this way to the emotion ‘terror’, however, would most likely make the problem worse. Fortifying organizational and city spaces may generate more alarm, more fear and anxiety, and more terror. It is more appropriate to mitigate the consequences of the emotion ‘terror’ by managing the well-being of workers and managers through counselling, emotional and psychological support, and flexible working environments. Yet, these responses will do little – or, more likely, nothing – to prevent physical violence, crime and political terrorism. Responding to only one type of terrorism leaves working people and businesses vulnerable to terrorism’s other consequences.

In this way, I argue that terrorism can be understood as a ‘contranym’. A contranym is a word that is encoded with opposing meanings – its existence embodies a contradiction. Terrorism is a word that signifies both violence and the absence of violence. By only responding to terrorism as violence more terror, anxiety and fear may result. By only responding to terrorism as an emotion, psychological management strategies and complacency may detract from efforts to physically improve security and fortify organizational and city spaces. Finding some sort of imaginary equilibrium that balances emotional and psychological needs with security needs may not be a useful response. This may merely result in an ineffective response to both types of terrorism. Contemporary acts of spectacular terrorism embody the problem of terrorism as contranym. The attacks on 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7 were not only devastatingly violent. They have also generated a lasting fear, anxiety and dread throughout the world. The simulations and images of spectacular terrorism captured by global media organizations on these dates combine with the violence of terrorism to create something more powerful than the violence or images alone.

These three attacks – 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7 – are the most successful attacks carried out by terrorists seeking to directly target working people and businesses. It is within the context of these attacks that I loosely refer to as the ‘Big Three’,¹ that an analysis of the meanings and consequences of terrorism for working people and businesses can occur.

9/11

The 11 September 2001 attacks in New York, Washington DC and Shanksville, Pennsylvania have become popularly known as ‘9/11’. It has been described, inaccurately for some, as the worst terrorist attack ever and for the United States a ‘Second Pearl Harbor’ (Whitaker, 2007: 27). The links forged between 9/11 and the attack on Hawaii during WWII is perhaps testament to the symbolic power of both of these events. In Manhattan, the hole in the ground where the Twin Towers once stood is known as ‘Ground Zero’, and it was the epicentre for this historic day. These attacks were not only the most devastating of the three targets on 9/11 but also the most visible. Cameras were already pointing at the World Trade Center Towers when passenger airliners were ploughed into their upper floors resulting in the collapse of the buildings and the deaths of almost 3000 people. Many of the ‘victims’ in or underneath the Twin Towers at the time of the attacks worked at the many companies housed in the World Trade Center. These buildings symbolized the economic heart of the planet. International and domestic companies from most sectors of the economy, including governmental and non-governmental organizations, endured the deaths of managers, business leaders, employees, clients and visitors. About 2000 people working in the financial industry alone died in the attacks (Alexander and Alexander, 2002: 124). Some companies, including Cantor Fitzgerald/eSpeed, the New York City Fire Department, Marsh and McLellan Co. and Aon Corp lost substantial segments of their workforce (Alexander and Alexander, 2002: 124). The destruction was not confined to just World Trade Plaza: in total 23 buildings in and around the World Trade Center were destroyed or damaged. As Baudrillard (2002: 4) argued, it was the ‘mother’ of all events.

9/11 is a location and date. Its everyday and even mundane usage conveys far more than simply one terrorist attack – it conveys disaster, suffering, precariousness and vulnerability, shock and awe, the fantasyscape of Hollywood disaster movies, the wars fought in its name, the freedom sacrificed for its posthumous prevention, the conspiracy theorists that argue that the US government staged these attacks in a war against the American people, the fracturing of hegemonic power, the malaise of the city as a safe and secure space, and dread and fear of an enemy who hides in plain sight. As Whitaker (2007: 27) argues:

These time and space coordinates represent moments when working people became witnesses and victims of international terrorism. Those killed on these dates in four cities of global significance are only part of the story. Terrorism, by its very nature, transcends the time and space coordinates in which it occurs. The attacks created not only witnesses and victims in these four major cities, but in all cities throughout the world. I suggest that anyone with a television is a witness and a victim of terrorism. Yet working people were especially identified as worthy targets on these dates. Far from these attacks occurring ‘out of the blue’, they were meticulously organized and coordinated to kill people at work or travelling to work. They are representative of a terrorist policy to generate terrifying and symbolic violence with working people as a material focus of their message.

Spain’s 9/11

The terrorist attacks in Madrid on 11 March 2004 resulted in the deaths of 191 travellers and injured around 1900 during peak hour on the city’s rail network. Ten bombs were delivered to the scene in rucksacks and detonated. Four trains were destroyed. The targets were commuters en route to the city for work, school and leisure. The views of one train commuter in Madrid perhaps highlights both the greatest strength and greatest weakness of precarious and vulnerable witnesses and victims: ‘If people really want to cause another bloodbath, eventually they will find a way. What can you do? Certainly not lock yourself up forever’ (Adler, 2004).

Whitaker (2007: 30), in an almost condescending tone, suggests that the terrorist attacks in Madrid can be viewed as ‘Spain’s 9/11’ – an event that was ‘different’ and ‘smaller’ in comparison to 9/11 but ‘quite horrendous to Spaniards’. Spaniards have considerable experience with terrorism. The Basque separatist group, Euzkadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) have carried out a protracted campaign in Spain and France. Initially, some law enforcement officials were quick to presume that ETA were behind the 3/11 attacks even as it was becoming increasingly likely that al-Qaeda inspired extremists were responsible.

The targets were not random, and not incidental. They were hand chosen for their spectacular value. The Madrid terrorist attacks represented another site where working people became the currency of international politics and violence. Not surprisingly the 3/11 attacks ‘dramatically brought people’s memories back’ to 9/11 (Moreno, 2005: 65). As Virilio (2002: 82) has argued, 9/11 has continued to explode in the minds of witnesses throughout the world. The Madrid attacks worked to reinforce the fear, anxiety and uncertainty felt on 11 September 2001. The attacks also had a number of social, cultural and political consequences. According to Moreno (2005: 66) in the minds of many Spaniards these attacks would not have happened if the Spanish Prime Minister José María Anzar’s party had not been such a staunch supporter of George W. Bush and Tony Blair and their policies in dealing with Iraq. A general election in Spain on 14 March 2004 ousted the ruling conservative party and installed a leftist-socialist party that immediately announced the removal of combat troops from Iraq. In a nation haunted by Basque separatist terrorism – a spectre drawn on by Anzar with his insistence that ETA were responsible for the attacks even as it became apparent that they were not – the attacks allowed people throughout Spain to draw on the pain and anger fostered in another time and space.

7/7

On 7 July 2005, 52 people were killed and around 700 were injured when coordinated suicide bombers targeted the London public transport network. Three bombs were detonated in trains just outside Liverpool Street and Edgware Road stations and another travelling between Kings Cross and Russell Square. Around an hour later, a bomb can-opened a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square (Whitaker, 2007: 34). Images of this mangled bus have become a timeless icon of the 7/7 attacks.

This attack was not contained within the date coordinates of ‘7/7’. To disconnect the attacks of 7/7 from the attempted attacks on 21 July 2005 and the killing of innocent civilian Jean Charles de Menezes the following day is to misunderstand the meaning and consequences of terrorism. The attempted attacks on 21 July profoundly undermined any hope of a speedy return to feelings of security and safety for witnesses and victims in the city: ‘On July 8, it was possible for survivors to think that we had missed the city’s big bad luck. On July 22 [an unfortunately choice of date], the sense was not of somber gratitude for escape but grim acceptance of the possible beginning of a pattern’ (Lawson in Tulloch, 2006: 71). This pattern, I argue, had already been well established on 9/11 and 3/11. The worker, the city, the business was once again the ‘target’. The damage that terrorists can cause is exemplified by the unscrupulous killing of an innocent man on the London rail network on 22 July 2005. Initially this killing was lauded as a successful execution of counter-terrorism policing (see Tulloch, 2006: 81). It was soon revealed to be ‘collateral damage’ in the so-called ‘War on Terror’ (McNab in Tulloch, 2006: 81).

The 7/7 attacks shattered a number of myths about terrorists and terrorism. First, the idea that terrorists were somehow jealous of Western ideas and values became unsustainable – if it was ever sustainable – on 7/7. It was homegrown Britons who carried out these bombings to devastating effect. Second, 7/7 showed that closing the borders through excessive policing of immigrants or refugees would do little to prevent terrorism. More generally, targeting people who appeared ‘foreign’ in counter-terrorism operations is an unreliable form of profiling. It is likely that ‘twenty-two-year-old, college-educated, cricket-playing, Mercedes-driving young Briton(s)… from Leeds’ would rarely be considered the source of international terrorism (Richardson, 2006: 91). Indeed, such people would be considered by criminologists to be among the least likely. On 7/7, however, they joined the chorus of international terrorism.

The Big Three

The significance of these attacks for working people in cities throughout the world is difficult to overstate. Yet, these so-called ‘Big Three’ have taken place in a broad historical context where working people and businesses have often been the targets of terrorism. The IRA targeted business interests in the UK for many years. Timothy McVeigh destroyed a government building in Oklahoma City killing 168 and injuring 674 (Alexander and Alexander, 2002: 6). In 1995 the Tokyo subway was targeted by the Aum Shinrikyo religious sect killing 12. The contemporary terrorist attacks on 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7 I have identified as especially significant not because they are necessarily the most deadly attacks – although the attacks in New York and Madrid were among the most deadly – or because they caused the most disruption. Events such as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WWII should place the three major acts of terrorism in some context. This context, however, does not diminish the power of the 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7 attacks to cause terror and this power should be located in the symbolism of the targets – a symbolism that was beamed instantly throughout the world through a variety of traditional and new media even as the events were occurring. These were symbols of Western prosperity, capitalism, and work. At the beginning of the twenty-first century attacks against hegemonic Western cities should be an unlikely occurrence. Yet, cities, businesses and workers are the preferred targets. Surely large-scale violence against workers, businesses and capital interests should have disappeared with the Cold War. But perhaps this is the beginning.

As I have already argued, not enough attention is paid to the workers who are witnesses and victims of terrorism. In the next section I explore the post-9/11 narratives of the worker.

Narratives of the Worker

This study of the consequences of terrorism for businesses places the vulnerability and precariousness of working people at the centre of an understanding of contemporary terrorism. It employs the notion of working people as witnesses and victims of terrorism. Their vulnerability is tied to a powerful commercial logic that creates the space for the emergence of sometimes conflicting and paradoxical situated knowledges, the violent language of terrorism, and a conceptualization of the business, the organization, and the corporation as a location for developing counter-terrorism responses. As Turner (2006: 26) argues ‘Human beings are ontologically vulnerable and insecure, and their natural environment, doubtful’. Yet these ontologies of insecurity are not static or stagnant. They are fluid, flexible and emergent and point to a world that can be universally characterized in indefinite ways as ‘post-9/11’. The institutions, routines and rituals that people enter in response to their precariousness and vulnerability are, in turn, insecure. These institutions are often centered in organizations, businesses, and work, the foundations of which ‘rest in common experience of vulnerability and precariousness’ (Turner, 2006: 27). It is the people who inhabit these spaces constituting organizations, businesses, and work and the associated institutions, routines, and rituals that were the targets of terrorism in New York, Washington DC, Madrid and London at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Being a worker, a witness and a victim in the city is an unavoidable part of life for millions of city-dwelling workers, an ‘inevitable contingency of human existence’ and makes ‘emplacement … crucial to our sense of identity, security, and continuity’ (Turner, 2006: 27).

Contemporary terrorists understand these contingencies well. The contemporary city houses millions of workers and organizations. The city is home to the affluent, the prosperous and the worker. It is also home to the criminal and the terrorist. I argue that the city is the terrorists’ playground and the worker is the target of their violence. It is through these contingencies that conceptualizations of terrorism that accentuate its supposed arbitrary and random nature are revealed for their absurdity. Whitaker (2007: 27) has described the terrorism that targeted New York, Washington DC, Madrid and London as attacks ‘out of the blue’ targeting ‘a number of great cities’. Whitaker (2007: 34) suggests in reference to the Madrid attacks that such ‘unpredictable, random violence’ ensures that the city’s population ‘will never be quite the same again’ no matter how much security is improved and hardened. Perhaps by treating terrorist violence as arbitrary and indiscriminate the inevitable confrontation with terrorism’s root causes can be postponed and eventually avoided.

It is these three acts of contemporary terrorism that capture what it means for working people to be victims and witnesses of terrorism – the 9/11 attacks or ‘Ground Zero’; the Madrid attacks in 2004, sometimes referred to as ‘Spain’s 9/11’ by at least one American writer (Whitaker, 2007: 30); and the London 7/7 attacks, otherwise known as ‘Underground Zero’ (Tulloch, 2006: 5). These were certainly far from the first acts of terrorism to strike at the lives of working people. At a conference held at the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies in 1977, many consequences of terrorists targeting businesses and working people were explored (Alexander and Kilmarx, 1979). The organizing theme for this conference was:

It is perhaps astounding that this problem, stated so aptly in 1977, was virtually ignored until nearly 3,000 workers were killed in the Twin Towers – a centre for the capitalist and working elite. Even when the Twin Towers were first targeted by international terrorists in 1993, little was said about these buildings as an epicentre for routine working and business lifestyles. The publications from the conference focused on a myriad of business and terrorism concepts and concerns, yet few focused on the targeting of working people. Naturally, the chief concern of this conference was the communist threat and left-wing terror groups. While once the ideology of such groups necessitated targeting societies consisting of ‘the contradiction between the wealth and power of the “haves” (big business coupled with ruling oligarchies) and the greatest numbers but impotence of the “have-nots”’ (Miller and Russell, 1979: 56), the change in terrorist ideology in contemporary times has not been accompanied by a change in targets. The equation for the terrorist is relatively simple – find a location where many people will be killed and injured and the region will be brought to a stand-still. It does not take a terrorism expert or a risk analyst to quickly identify tall buildings and public transport in major cities as terrorist targets par excellence.

Miller and Russell (1979: 60) made a particularly noteworthy observation as part of their exploration of a crucial ‘dilemma’ in counter-terrorism security for business in the publication from this conference. Businesses, by their nature, are open and designed to be freely accessed by the public. Businesses in designing their offices, their workforce and management structure, at least partly if not substantially, seek to create ‘favorable, receptive images before the consumer’ (Miller and Russell, 1979: 60). Naturally, threats to this corporate image can only be countered by more positive corporate images. An over-fortified building, a heavily-secured workplace, multiple security vetting and checking procedures, and invasive prying into the lives of customers and employees in the name of security will not only be counter-terrorist, but counter-productivity, counter-profitability and counter-well-being for those most closely associated with the organization.

This was a crucial dilemma that people in businesses faced before and after 9/11. This, I argue, is why a bomb was passed through security checks and found its way onto a commercial plane that exploded over Lockerbie in Scotland killing 270 in December 1985. It is also why knapsacks loaded with powerful explosives were carried onto the Madrid and London public transport networks and detonated. It is why risk managers will be hopelessly unable to predict the consequences and the likelihood of the next attack. It is why people in businesses and counter-terrorism professionals will learn much about the attackers from closed circuit television (CCTV) footage following the next attack on working people, but nothing before.

More than anything, an effective organizational response to terrorism must account for the precarious and vulnerable human body – the worker, the witness and the victim. People occupy various spaces within the cityscape. Chief among these spaces is the workplace, public transport networks and locations of major events. The workplace is a particularly crucial location for managing and organizing human behaviour, attitudes, opinions, riskiness and danger, and efficient and effective production, and is therefore a place where the effects of terrorism can be resisted. In this way ‘management’ plays a vital role in maintaining worker morale, motivation and well-being during times of terror. As Parker (2002: 2–3) argues management has become a precondition for an organized and functioning society:

Management and organizations provide regular people with the means to become masters of a risky and unpredictable world. Although progress towards a better understanding of the consequences of terrorism has been slow, the need to understand these consequences has changed little since 9/11.

Terrorism and the Worker

Of the small number of studies available that have investigated the impact of terrorism on workers, few have substantially contributed to our understanding of the meanings and consequences of terrorism for workers. According to Alexander (2004: 124) – a contribution that does significantly advance this exploration – ‘Any prospective terrorist attacks in the United States or abroad will victimize labor’. In particular, he argues, the 9/11 terrorists were successful in creating an environment where it seemed that another terrorist attack was likely and this has resulted in a variety of negative consequences for the health and well being of people at work. These effects can take months to years to subside and have a significant impact on satisfaction and productivity at work. In the time following an act of terrorism workers are more likely to change organizations and professions, move house, and reprioritize life goals to place less importance on work and more on family and leisure. Others will continue to work through and may be asked to perform to a higher level to return operations to a pre-terrorism threat state. These people experience high levels of stress and anxiety that may manifest as depression and other mental illnesses, the most damaging of which is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In the months following the Oklahoma City bombing, Alexander (2004: 128) argues, people were absent frequently, took leave as soon as it accrued, left their jobs, and engaged in reckless behaviours such as alcohol and narcotic abuse and excessive smoking. Reports from organizations affected on 9/11 tell of similar experiences. Other affects include a desire to join social organizations such as trade unions, lower demand for high-profile positions in prestigious organizations especially when they are housed in large cities and job insecurity as economic impacts are felt. When this happened it created significant workplace relations management problems – these potential consequences are known to significantly inhibit an organization’s performance. Alexander (2004) also indirectly refers to occupational health and safety considerations, business continuity issues, culture and managing diversity. This study, however, does little more than identify a series of problems that may occur and provides little evidence to support these claims. Moreover, despite Alexander’s reliance on short comments from interviews conducted with company executives and security managers, there is a sense that these important workplace concerns are ‘played down’ and treated as insignificant. Despite Alexander’s acknowledgment that any act of terrorism will likely victimize labour, the author furthers the cause of those writers and researchers that seek to make the concerns and dangers faced by workers in a time of terror secondary.

Czinkota et al. (2005) similarly explore some of the consequences of terrorism for organizations and management yet, like most of the limited literature that explores terrorism and business, the human element is seemingly stripped from the equation. People will feel the terror, and their response and coping strategies will determine the future of an organization. ‘Terrorism’ makes no sense without people. For Czinkota et al. (2005: 581) terrorism ‘poses both direct and indirect threats to the operations of the firm’. The authors argue for an emergent understanding of the consequences of terrorism for businesses and working people that includes strategic considerations of the threat terrorism poses. Where the authors err is in their assessment of direct and indirect consequences. As I have argued in Chapter 2, working people are in no way ‘indirectly’ affected by terrorism. Working people are the intended targets – they are the witnesses and the victims of contemporary terrorism. Czinkota et al. (2005) stumble upon a key problem that they do not fully develop in their research – businesses will make decisions that ensure the profitable, efficient and effective operation of the firm, not decisions that will necessarily provide complete counter-terrorism security. In some businesses, counter-terrorism will only be considered an important issue so long as it contributes to the so-called bottom-line.

Another study conducted by Mainiero and Gibson (2003) in December 2001 vastly improved our knowledge of the social and psychological impacts of terrorism on workers. The authors analysed survey data collected from 5860 respondents that explored the ‘emotional fallout from 9-11’. Mainiero and Gibson (2003) argue that ‘The terrorism of September 11^th, 2001, unleashed primal emotions in the minds and hearts working in corporations all across America. The magnitude of the violence and the relative randomness of those who were affected left us feeling traumatized and horrified’. Mainiero and Gibson (2003) conclude that workers throughout the United States experienced trauma as a result of the attacks – not only those in New York and Washington DC. Three primary emotional responses were exhibited by respondents in this study – fear, denial and anger. Many reported profound fear and described themselves as ‘dumbfounded and scared’ when at work. Others were said to be in a state of ‘denial’. This often manifested as some workers being dismissive of co-workers who claimed that they were traumatized by 9/11 and believed that it ‘should not affect’ their working life. Others were angry and directed their rage towards co-workers and their employers who they believed were unsympathetic to their pain and anguish. These behaviours often led to conflict and a breakdown of workplace relationships which in turn led to decreased satisfaction and increased stress. When this occurred the result was often higher absenteeism, turnover and lower productivity. The authors additionally conclude that proximity of workplaces to the World Trade Towers was a factor. Oddly, the authors also conclude that women were found to be more susceptible to the emotional and psychological consequences of terrorism, and both genders were more likely to be affected if they were married or/and had children. It may be, they conclude, that women are more willing to express feelings and people with families are more likely to reprioritize the importance of work and be more sensitive to risk.

While formal research is limited the same cannot be said for the anecdotal and journalistic commentary that flowed following 9/11. These reports were often based on simple interviews and observation and were largely speculative and told from an American perspective. Yet they may serve to direct more rigorous academic endeavours that seek to understand the meaning of terrorism for business. Some of the broad themes from this commentary are identified and presented here.

Workplace Spirituality

Spirituality in the workplace is a phenomenon that is gaining in popularity (Robbins et al., 2003: 60). According to Robbins et al. (2003: 60) it recognizes that people are ‘nourished by meaningful work that takes place in the context of a community’. Stewart (2002: 92) argues that when facing the threat of terrorism workplace spirituality offers a ‘safe harbour’ and a meaning to life and work. ‘An emerging spiritual renaissance in the workplace’ keeps people attending work and can lead to economic recovery (Stewart, 2002: 92). According to survey research conducted in firms in California, 55 per cent of respondents claimed that spirituality plays a part in their working lives and 34 per cent of those believe that this role has increased since 9/11 (Stewart, 2002: 92).

Among these speculative narratives of the worker in times of terror there may be some truths. It is unlikely that all, or even some of these, will be present in any one organization at any one time. However, these narratives speak of a need for further research and analysis – it is a need that I hope to confront in this book and in the data chapters that follow. In confronting the problem in this way it may be necessary to think about terrorism as a problem with consequences that may never be fully understood. But when businesses take steps to respond to terrorism, each organization will become a testing ground – a type of counter-terrorism laboratory – for understanding the meanings and consequences of terrorism, and a clinic for experimentation and formulation of business strategies for mitigating terrorism’s impact.

Workers as Targets

In order to understand the meaning and consequences of terrorism for workers it is important that I address what it means for the worker to be a target of international terrorism. I ask the question, why wouldn’t workers be considered ideal targets for terrorism? According to Ward Churchill (2003), the 9/11 attacks were a case of the ‘chickens coming home to roost’. Churchill (2003) asks what was illegitimate about the targets of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as most authors claim. The Pentagon was a military target – most would agree with this assessment. But Churchill (2003) controversially contends that the American working people that were killed and maimed on 9/11 were members of a ‘Perpetrator Population’ and if ‘good Germans’ following WWII were held responsible for the actions of a government they vicariously condoned, then why should ‘good Americans’ be exempt from being similarly accountable? Moreover, Churchill (2003) argues that the merchant bankers and financiers that inhabited the Twin Towers were hardly innocent civilians. Workers in the Twin Towers were on the front-line of international speculation that can draw extraordinary wealth to the investor at the expense of an unknown, exploited overseas community. Indeed, this would not be the first time that the corporate world has been made the scapegoat for the world’s ills. As controversial as Churchill’s views may be, he undoubtedly taps into a groundswell of popular belief that extends through many parts of the world and manifests as what some might call ‘anti-Americanism’ (see Rubin and Rubin, 2004).

With their proven desire and capability for mass murder – exemplified by 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7 – the contemporary terrorist poses a diabolical threat to the everyday and routine operation of the corporate world. But we are all complicit in the consequences of terrorism because terrorists are most damaging when they inspire fear, anxiety and overreaction. Before I can proceed in earnest down this line of reasoning with an exploration of corporate counter-terrorism it is important to critically consider the meaning of ‘counter(-)terrorism’² and its significance for understanding the diabolical nature of the threat of terrorism. In politics, the term ‘counterterrorism’ has been used as a ‘vehicle’ for oppressive policy and violent governmental reprisals against people deemed to be ‘terrorists’ (Simpson [1996] in Ray and Schaap, 2003: 75). It is a cornerstone of terrorism theory that oppressive responses to terrorist violence can in turn generate more fierce and determined responses from terrorists. As such counterterrorism can be counterproductive. Managers through their corporate counter-terrorism policies and practices need to be wary of creating more terror. Managerial and security narratives become crucial for articulating the threat of terrorism for workers, providing the appropriate conditions for effectively confronting the threat, and allowing the corporate counter-terrorism laboratory to generate emergent, creative and situated solutions. Turning workplaces into fortresses will likely cause more fear and anxiety amongst workers and may do little to prevent a determined suicide bomber or car bomber detonating their device in the crowds that congregate outside organizational spaces or on the public transport networks that bring an organization’s workforce to the city. More than anything, overreacting to terrorism can create workplace stress and anxiety, be detrimental to perceptions of security and safety which can in turn decrease motivation, productivity, and efficiency and subsequently hand terrorists an unnecessary victory. Managerial and security narratives must stand not only on the frontline of counter-terrorism response, but they must also form a rear-guard defense against over-reactions, politicized hyperbole and paranoid suspicions that threaten to undermine the post-9/11 business world.

Narratives of management and security

I have, up until this point, focused most of my attention towards the problem of terrorism and its consequences – consequences that I argue are most felt by precarious and vulnerable workers. I now turn my attention towards responses to terrorism. I argue that these responses are framed within management and security narratives that interpret, define and contextualize terrorism whilst developing the techniques, practices and methods to prevent and mitigate its occurrence and impact. Building on my argument that terrorism should be understood as a contranym, it is important for managers and business leaders to respond to terrorism as both a destructive and deadly act of political violence and as an emotion.

In a time of terror and a world popularly characterized as post-9/11, businesses play an important role in a nation’s counter-terrorism efforts. Not only does this role extend to closing the gaps in security in city spaces by maintaining security in stores, public spaces, and office buildings, but also to supporting the social and cultural lives of workers by providing a livelihood, social networks and emotional support. In doing so, businesses can play a role in fighting both terrorism as political violence, and terrorism as an emotion. I suggest that organizations have become a space for understanding the meanings and consequences of terrorism and a place where counter-terrorism efforts can begin. Some of the actions that managers and business leaders can take are discussed in this section and in Chapter 6.

The many ways that managers can respond to terrorism represents a growing range of managerial roles that include the management of risk and security and worker well-being. These roles sometimes compete for prominence. Some business leaders and managers will work to fight terrorism through efforts to improve physical security by hiring more security staff, purchasing security technologies such as surveillance equipment, bomb and metal detectors, enhancing security at entry points to buildings and stores, and training existing staff in security awareness. Others will spend millions of dollars outsourcing the ‘risk’ of terrorism to firms that specialize in disaster management and the threat of terrorism. These firms represent a booming industry and some have seen the War on Terror as an opportunity to capitalize on the fear and anxiety of witnesses and victims. These firms offer a range of products ranging from gas masks and decontamination equipment to under-the-desk parachutes that can allow workers in high-rise buildings to supposedly leap to safety from burning buildings (Alexander, 2002; Alexander and Alexander, 2004).

Resolving the workplace consequences generated and sustained by terrorism poses considerable challenges to working people and organizational decision-makers. Any response to terrorism will have both intended and unintended outcomes. Some of these will be positive and some will be negative. Often, deciding which outcomes are positive and which are negative will be difficult. To make such decisions, managers and business leaders will rely heavily on methods for measuring risk and understanding its consequences. Regardless of the methods used to understand the threat of terrorism, responses must be situated within the nuances and routines of each organization in ways that are appropriate, manageable and that calmly integrate the possibility of terrorism into the everydayness of organizational life. Before I turn to how this integration might be accomplished, it is necessary that I spend some time explaining the nature of ‘risk’ and its shortcomings as a device for understanding the problem of terrorism, its consequences and how managers and business leaders should formulate responses.

Risk

Risk has quickly become the dominant ideology for understanding the post-9/11 world. While a wide variety of studies have employed diverse perspectives on ‘risk’, theories of risk have been dominated by the work of Ulrich Beck (1999) and Anthony Giddens (1991). Beck and Giddens have explored the societies of risk – characterized by the presence of so-called ‘high-consequence risks’ (Peterson, 1997: 190) – and their interrelationship with industrial and global capital, the movements that arise to oppose capital, and people seeking selfhood, identity and a ‘personal sense of security’ (Peterson, 1997: 190):

Yet neither writer explores the underlying assumption of risk theory – the assumption that people are autonomous rational actors capable of assessing risk and making appropriate judgments to avoid dangers. The threat of terrorism is often formulated within this theoretical construct of Beck’s (1999) ‘risk society’. Coaffee’s (2003) exploration of terrorism, risk and the city for example, details many of these theoretical dimensions as they relate to the city in times of terror. For Coaffee (2003: 6) ‘the potential threat of urban terrorism’ has generated a counter-effort to ‘design out’ risk through security advancements that must improve quicker than terrorist innovation. Failure to do so, according to Coaffee, can create heightened perceptions of being at risk from terrorism and a significant decline in consumer and business confidence. In short, the urban landscape is ‘materially and symbolically’ undermined by the risks associated with terrorism (Coaffee, 2003: 7).

Much of this rests on the underlying assumption that regular people are able to calculate risks as they go about their everyday lives. However, some argue that people are not designed to adequately calculate the risk of dreaded events such as terrorism. As Žižek (2002: 248) argues, ‘this theory of the risk society falls short’ because it places ‘common subjects’ into an ‘irrational predicament’.

Žižek’s explanation of Beck’s ‘risk society’ highlights an important paradox within risk frameworks – measuring ‘risk’ is dependent on how people perceive their precariousness and vulnerability regardless of whether their perceptions are reasonable/accurate/well-informed. It may be that some corporate ‘risk analysis’ does little more than audit the fears and anxieties harboured by business leaders, managers and workers. I argue that this paradox is especially problematic for managers and business leaders that base many of their decisions on the outcomes of risk analysis. The outcome of any risk analysis is, naturally, only as reliable as the information – the inputs – that form the foundation of the analysis. Information, data and inputs that illuminate the possibility and threat of terrorism are hard to come by. Risk managers are most comfortable when predicting business trends, economic and financial swings, and national and local growth and employment figures. When planning for terrorism, risk managers are forced to rely on anecdotal intelligence analysis, all-disaster trends, and business continuity plans. This will help little when planning for scenarios where the corporate offices of an organization are destroyed or where half the workforce is killed in a terrorist attack. Yet these were the realities that some managers and business leaders faced after 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7.

Perhaps this is why the ‘Armaggedon complex’ (Haraway, 2000) is so prevalent in corporate and security culture and why the worst-case scenarios are so easy to imagine. I argue that this is where a distinction can be drawn between risk and dread. These two concepts are linked and should be viewed, for the purposes of this discussion, as two sides of the same coin. Risk – on one side of the coin – is a mythic universe of calculations, probabilities, inputs, facts and figures. It embodies the need to know when what can be known is perhaps nothing at all (at the very least most will acknowledge that it involves a lot of guess work). Some have been more scathing than others in describing risk in this way. Mueller (2006) argues that due to this lack of understanding of terrorism and the threat it poses it has been consistently and irrationally ‘overblown’. He argues that politicians and the terrorism industry – the terrorologists – work hard to accentuate and inflate perceptions of terrorism. Mueller (2006: 1) seeks to engage with a key question for understanding terrorism – ‘Which is the greater threat: terrorism, or our reaction against it?’

I do not intend, however, to rely on numbers games such as this to determine what business leaders and managers should do in responding to terrorism. The numbers of people killed or the financial costs of terrorism events are only a small part of the story. These figures do not tell us, for example, how terrorists might choose their targets or how people will behave when forced to confront the threat of terrorism. Perhaps the most important thing we need to know about terrorism – a threat that cannot really be calculated – is that it is not something that is likely to occur, but when it next occurs it will probably cause significant damage and kill either a few people or a great many people. When Michael Moore in an interview on the US 60 Minutes current affairs programme said that terrorism remains a highly unlikely occurrence, interviewer Bob Simon replied ‘But no one sees the world like that’. Bob Simon is right. He is right because terrorism causes terror. So while I do not believe that the emotion terror can be alleviated by an appeal to numbers that suggest it is a highly unlikely occurrence, I do believe that terrorism must rank lower than other threats and risks. It is perhaps more likely that someone will be killed as a passenger in a motor vehicle or even struck by lightning, but these more likely dangers can perhaps be more easily avoided. We don’t have to get into cars and we don’t have to stand in fields during storms. But how does one remain safe from terrorism? How do we manage its risk? I suppose we could stay at home and not go to work. For many, this is not a decision that can be made. Mortgages must be paid, bills continue to accrue and the kids must be sent through schools and universities. Moreover, if people stopped attending work, societies would have to radically change. Few would be prepared to overreact in such a way. So people continue to work in cities and travel on public transport networks. We all, in one way or another, deal with the post-9/11 threat of terrorism as part of our working lives – it is a threat that has become a routine and everyday part of living and working in cities.

Žižek (2002: 248) takes this argument against ‘risk’ a little further. He argues that risk invokes ‘political frustrations’ among people who are called upon to ‘decide’ the conditions of dangerousness and risk while being reminded that they are ‘in no position’ to decide or ‘objectively weigh the pros and cons’. Resorting to conspiracy theories can be viewed as a desperate attempt to resolve this risk paradox. These conspiracy theories are not solely the domain of left-wing political radicals and anti-Semitic ideologues. Some of the chief conspiracy theorists are drawn from the world of counterterrorism and business. I have sat through endless counterterrorism conferences listening to fantastic possibilities of terrorists who want to somehow ‘turn our cities into deserts’ by detonating a nuclear warhead or releasing biological, chemical, or radiological material on an unsuspecting population in a major global – always Western – city.

On the other side of the coin is dread. Dread in this context represents the impossibility of the order of risk. When the calculation of risk and danger is not possible, the inability to calculate – and, therefore, understand – the threat of terrorism reduces once rational and confident city-dwellers into stressed-out and anxious witnesses and victims of terrorism. When there is nothing to flee from, one cannot flee. In contemporary times significant acts of terrorism have occurred in New York, Washington DC, Madrid and London. Then why do people in other cities throughout the world fear the possibility of terrorism? Even many people living and working in cities targeted by terrorists did not witness terrorism first hand. Much like people in distant cities throughout the world they watched the terrorist events unfold on television, in newspapers and listened in on the radio. To avoid crime one can avoid high-crime suburbs. But how is terrorism to be avoided when it seems to be everywhere and nowhere at once? How does one understand the terrorist when they hide in plain sight, when they are one of us as they were on 7/7? The dreaded possibility of terrorism can be said to lurk in every corner of every city. If 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7 had not generated this fear and dread in cities throughout the world then we surely would not have described them as acts of terror.

I weigh in here with Kierkegaard (1957) and his distinction between fear, an emotion bound in events and occurrences that we know and understand, and dread, a fear of the events and occurrences we cannot yet fathom. As Kierkegaard (1957: 38) wrote: ‘I must … call attention to the fact that it [dread] is different from fear and similar concepts which refer to something definite, whereas dread is freedom’s reality as possibility for possibility’. Kierkegaard (1957) used biblical references to Adam and Eve to illustrate this distinction. As God hands to Adam prohibitions he also hands the consequences of disobeying: ‘Thou shalt surely die’. Death, of course, is devoid of meaning to the first person. For Kierkegaard the emotion that this strikes is dread, or a fear of nothing. Perhaps New Yorkers can choose to avoid airplanes, tall buildings and the inner city areas, and Londoners can choose to not use public transport. What should workers in distant cities avoid in order to feel safe from terrorism (moreover, when Londoners avoid public transport or New Yorkers avoid airplanes and tall buildings they may not be more safe at all!)? One could argue through the concept of dread that the fear of terrorism for witnesses and victims is a fear of something unreal, unfathomable – it is a fear of something that defies explanation and our ability to take steps to protect ourselves without overreacting.

The power of terrorism stems partly from the fact that it can have an impact in places where devastating terrorism has never occurred. In the immediate vicinity of an act of terrorism some will be killed and injured and buildings may be destroyed. The families of the victims will feel trauma, as will those who live and work in the targeted city. Terrorism, however, can have meaning and consequences for people in cities throughout the world as I seek to demonstrate in this book. Even if terrorism does not occur on the streets of Melbourne – my home town – terrorism still has very real meanings and consequences. The meanings and consequences of terrorism in Australian cities are well documented. Michaelsen (2005: 330) argues that Australians hold a ‘general assumption’ that terrorists are trying to carry out an attack in Australia. A poll conducted in the Sydney Morning Herald found that 68 per cent of respondents believed that terrorists would strike in Australia before too long (Michaelsen, 2005: 330). In a study conducted by The Lowy Institute (Cook, 2005), ‘international terrorism’ is viewed as the third most worrying outside threat behind nuclear proliferation, and global warming and ranking ahead of international disease, population growth and the growth of China.

The question should not be who is right and who is wrong, or who has a right to be legitimately afraid of terrorism and who is afraid of nothing. But it is my argument that ‘risk management’ will only account for part of the problem that terrorism poses. The standard categorization of terrorism under risk management models as ‘low probability, high consequence’ says little about the threat of terrorism, the damage it causes, and how an effective response can be developed.

I return now to the practical responses that managers and business leaders can be developed to respond to terrorism, prevent its occurrence and mitigate its consequences, and how these responses can be integrated into the day-to-day routines of business. I have organized my discussion of these responses under two headings that represent key goals for post-9/11 business security – corporate counter-terrorism and simulating security. I argue that these key goals are linked by the need to incorporate counter-terrorism security into the routine, banal and everyday practice of business and management.

Corporate Counter-Terrorism

I have presented several papers in which I have tried to outline the important role that businesses can play in the ‘War on Terror’. One such paper I presented at the Recent Advances in Security Technology Conference at Melbourne University in 2007 – this was a conference that was well attended by academics, business managers and leaders, and security professionals. When I had finished my presentation, the inevitable questions were asked – how do we improve our counter-terrorism security? What specific things can we do to protect our businesses and workplaces? Can we realistically do anything to prevent terrorism? There were also other questions – when is terrorism most likely to occur? What damage is it likely to cause? How do we continue with ‘business as usual’ after terrorism? I had some answers to these questions (and the research informants that are the focus of Chapter 6 do as well), but counter-terrorism efforts should perhaps not be universally prescribed. While there are broad tactics and techniques that business leaders and managers can adopt to improve their counter-terrorism security, there are also many significant situated factors where an organization’s environment, operating practices, culture, personnel, design, managerial methods and a host of other contextual and operational features will act as filters for implementing counter-terrorism security.

I also presented another paper dealing with these issues at The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) conference at the University of Auckland in 2007. The concerns and questions of this audience of scholars and academics with sociology and social science backgrounds were quite different – this audience of scholars and academics who were free of the burdens of running a post-9/11 organization were most concerned for the emotional, psychological, and everyday well-being of precarious and vulnerable workers. Their questions included: How do workers feel about working in times of terror? How will organizations protect their workers? What can workers do to decrease their likelihood of being caught up in an act of terrorism? Does the threat of terrorism cause added stress, fear and anxiety? Will people work in cities in the future?

I am eager to share with you, the reader, everything I know about what practical steps business leaders and managers should take to protect their organizations from terrorism and the threat it poses. But to do so would be problematic. If you are a security manager at a major international airport or a nuclear power facility then the more security the better – upgrade the skills of security guards, purchase the latest, cutting-edge technology for biodetection, metal and bomb residue detection, and gain access to the best trained air marshalls and security sniffer dogs. Indeed, if you are a manager at one of these locations, or other locations requiring the highest levels of security, then I imagine the existing literature on the impact of terrorism on business would provide you with a host of ideas and methods for protecting your organization against terrorist violence. It is perhaps appropriate in high-security environments for the workers to take second place to physical security imperatives. I would still suggest that the workers should be the chief concern of managers in high-security situations, but I also acknowledge that there are times when workers will need to be willing to deal with rigorous and strict security. If you are a business leader and manager in a city-dwelling organization – and the city where your organization is located is not in a war-zone – then I imagine that the sort of security I referred to above would be wildly inappropriate and damaging to workplace cohesion, bottom-line productivity and worker well-being. In such situations extreme security such as the kind you would find at airports and nuclear facilities should be avoided at all costs.

This, of course, makes my task in this section a difficult one. I do not want to provide a ‘shopping list’ of counter-terrorism gadgets of high expense and moderate value, nor do I want to provide an all-purpose ‘recipe’ for good business counter-terrorism. But what I can do is provide a map of how business leaders and managers can prevent terrorism by improving security, managing worker well-being, and integrating the post-9/11 threat of terrorism into the everydayness, routines and rituals of everyday business life.

The two very different audiences in Melbourne and Auckland asked two very different types of questions. It is perhaps to be expected that business leaders and security managers would be preoccupied with how terrorism might affect the everyday operations, functions, viability and continuity of their businesses. It is perhaps equally predictable that academic sociologists and social scientists would be preoccupied with their concerns for the precarious and vulnerable citizens of cities. These different sets of questions are illustrative of what business leaders and managers should aim for in protecting their businesses from the consequences of terrorism – protect the office buildings, stores and locations where businesses are housed, and protect the physical, emotional and psychological well-being of precarious and vulnerable workers. It is the latter aim that I argue is the most important. If business leaders and managers protect the physical, emotional and psychological well-being of workers – their physical safety through security improvements, and their emotional and psychological well-being through mitigating their feelings of fear, stress and anxiety – then all other aspects of business counter-terrorism security will more easily fall into place.

Despite the obvious importance of the worker in any business plan to prevent and mitigate terrorism – the worker’s consent to security changes, training and procedures, their know-how, and their vulnerability and precariousness – most of the literature that explores the meaning and consequences of terrorism gives less regard to the security of workers than to the security of the buildings where organizations are housed. This problem arises from how we view terrorism and how it is delivered through the mass media – we concentrate on terrorism where things explode, not where terror is felt. Because of this, the information that witnesses and victims rely upon for understanding terrorism is reactionary – always bound to the most recent terror attack that has been splashed across the front pages of major newspapers. It is to the problem of reactionary security that I now turn.

Reactionary Security

Business leaders and managers should rely on the best available information about terrorism to formulate their responses, but sometimes there is little useful information available. Naturally, much of the information that is available is drawn from the most recent high-profile terrorist attacks. However, focusing on these most visible and recent attacks – as many law enforcement agencies, governmental departments and businesses have been accused of doing – has sparked a series of reactionary responses. After 9/11, airports and aircrafts received renewed attention and soon these once so-called ‘soft targets’ had been significantly fortified to the point where many experts suggest that it is highly unlikely that passenger aircraft will be targeted in such a way again. This naturally does not diminish the number of terrorists that the world faces. There is a displacement effect where would-be terrorists begin to seek softer targets with less security protocols and a greater likelihood for a successful attack. It should not have been a surprise that rail commuters and networks became targets. In response, considerable energy and resources have since been expended to battle terrorism in the theatre of public transport. But what will be the consequences of this displacement effect? Much has been documented about the continued vulnerability of rail and public transport networks yet if I were to think like a terrorist – and as I have already suggested, they are not as arbitrary and unpredictable as some have argued – I would be looking for other softer targets.

It may be reasonable to insist that security at airports take on a fortressed quality and that everyone who boards a passenger aircraft be screened by highly-trained security staff using bomb and metal detection equipment. The need for such measures is clear given the long history of terrorists’ willingness to target airports and planes. But it would not be desirable to use the same methods to protect rail and bus transport – the consequences of airport-style security screening for other transport services would most likely outweigh the benefits. There would be better physical security perhaps (I say ‘perhaps’ because rigorous security did not prevent 9/11 and a host of other terrorist attacks launched from airports), but it would be at the expense of the free and open use of public transport services. It is clear that counter-terrorism security needs to be implemented with a broad consideration of the situational factors inherent to any particular organization’s internal and external environments. For this reason counter-terrorism security needs to be part of strategic business planning and not merely part of a security manager’s delegated authority.

Yet, even if managers and business leaders spent years strategically planning for terrorism, it remains likely that business responses to terrorism would be reactive. This word holds negative connotations. To be reactive in a time of terror suggests that too little is being done, that plans are being implemented to prevent threats from the past but not the future, and it implies that international terrorists are always one step ahead. The terrorist attacks of 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7 sparked a whole range of reactionary security responses. These responses stretched well beyond the world of work. International war, discriminatory and violent reprisals carried out against Muslims living in Western cities, draconian counterterrorism legislation, and behavioural responses characterized by fear, stress and anxiety are all side-effects of ill-considered and poorly planned reactions to terrorism. So too, the business responses to 9/11 were in many instances reactive, dramatic, overzealous and overblown. John Mueller (2006) has argued against overreacting to terrorism in his exploration of what he calls the ‘Limited Destructiveness of Terrorism’. He argues that despite the high levels of anxiety, fear and danger usually associated with terrorism, it remains that the likelihood of dying in an act of terrorism is ‘microscopic’ (Mueller, 2006: 13). Relevant here are the comments of one of the business managers that I interviewed as part of the broader research project that has resulted in this book. He believed that the ‘Y2K bug’ threat was analogous to the threat of terrorism: ‘Some would have spent squillions. Others would not have spent a cent. Well, nothing happened. Interesting isn’t it?’ (Owen, December 13, 2005). It may be that in some instances the best thing to do in response to terrorism is nothing especially when visual and physical improvements to security may create more fear and alarm amongst workers.

However, doing nothing will rarely be an option. If a future act of terrorism was to damage an organization’s built environment or kill its workers, the fact that a strategic ‘nothing’ was done to prevent terrorism may result in significant legal and social consequences. As such, following a major act of terrorism it will be natural for managers and business leaders to rigorously explore ways of improving physical security in the stores, offices and buildings where their organizations are located and, in the process, an overreaction might sometimes be the result. This is because, as Alexander and Alexander (2002: 52) argue, the way we think about the nature of corporate ‘risk’ dramatically changed on 9/11. Organizations in locations considered vulnerable and precarious – such as those in or below tall and prominent buildings, prominent retail districts, and public transport networks – rushed to improve security. Others, Alexander and Alexander (2002: 55) argue, ‘have likened investment on security measures to funds allocated to reducing pollution in that they are both socially helpful but economically unproductive’. This is a dangerous assumption. The 9/11 hijackers were able to exploit lax security at airports to carry out their acts of terrorism. The commercial air travel sector has subsequently devoted considerable time and money towards improving security through physical security upgrades and fostering security awareness among workers. Surveillance technology and monitoring has also been deployed to improve security and assist in the development of security-oriented cultures in the airport/airline industry.

Businesses in all sectors, Alexander and Alexander (2002: 52–53) suggest, can reduce the possibility of terrorism by ‘adding new security guards, purchasing surveillance equipment, acquiring metal and bomb detection equipment, buying chemical and biological agent detectors, acquiring machines that can irradiate mail, and training security and office employees’. Alexander and Alexander (2002: 52) argue that business managers that act quickly and become the first to adopt more stringent security may gain a competitive advantage. However, the consequences of more stringent, more visible security can be detrimental to corporate performance – higher costs, shrinking profit margins, and interruptions to the flow of inventory and services, and a failure to manage the security perceptions of employees, clients, customers and other people who frequent the various locations that a business may occupy may become serious business problems.

Finding the balance between responding too little or too much to terrorism has kept security professionals, terrorism experts and business leaders guessing. I have sat through many debates at national and international security conferences where participants have rambled on about worst-case scenarios and the elaborate security methods and products that will prevent them. These methods and products run the continuum from the slightly silly to the entirely ludicrous. What if a nuclear weapon was detonated in the middle of Sydney Harbour and took out the army, the police and the fire brigade, and two million people are dead? – one breathless security ‘expert’ once shrieked. What if a nuclear weapon was detonated in the Pacific Ocean and kills millions of people in Australian and US coastal cities? Would people in middle-Australia and middle-America know what to do? Do people working above the thirteenth floor in Australia’s high-rise buildings have parachutes? Do people have their pre-arranged ‘Go bags’ complete with toilet paper? They don’t? God help us all!

The funny thing about this Armageddon complex – or as Haraway (2000) describes it, our ‘endangered species discourse’³ – is that by focusing on these ludicrous scenarios, many will ignore the more important, yet seemingly less significant, aspects of business and city security that can be reorganized and reoriented to improve preparedness for terrorism and the threat it poses and, most importantly, improve feelings and perceptions of terrorism and security among employees, clients, customers and all people who live and work in the city. This, I argue, should be considered the front line for the so-called ‘War on Terror’ and a location where leaders and managers in businesses and organizations can most contribute to the prevention and mitigation of terrorism. By tackling the anxieties and fears of precarious and vulnerable working people – people who are the chosen targets of contemporary terrorism – managers and business leaders can do more than most to prevent and mitigate the impact of terrorism.

As I have already suggested earlier in this book, there is a contradiction between the imperative for maintaining a free and open workplace for consumers, clients and workers and the need to close off and secure workplaces from terrorism for these very same people. Naturally this is a complex dilemma and ideally a balance will be found between freedom, openness and security. I suggest that this dilemma is crucial for understanding contemporary terrorism as it affects working people. As general secretary of the rail workers’ union in Britain argued following the 7/7 bombings: ‘Where you’ve got … six exits … It’s not like where people single-queue and put their bags through. The actual stations are massive open spaces’ (in Tulloch, 2005: 169). The suggestion here is that perhaps little can be done by way of security to prevent attacks such as 7/7 from occurring. This problem was similarly explored by Holt (2006) who suggests that public transport is particularly vulnerable to terrorism. A successful attack against the public transport networks – as witnesses and victims have seen firsthand – kills many people sitting and standing in enclosed environments, severely inhibits access to the city, interrupts flows of products, inventory and people travelling for work and leisure, and, most importantly from the perspective of contemporary terrorists, these networks occupy sites that are exceedingly difficult and undesirable to secure. Indeed, no competitive corporation would be willing to significantly disrupt travel flows, people movement, and freedom and openness in the name of security. Even if restrictive security measures could be justified and accepted by the broader public, it would be an ‘own goal’ of sorts. Terrorists hope that witnesses and victims will change in response to their violence. Implementing restrictive and oppressive security that diminishes the freedom of movement and thought would surely award terrorists an unnecessary victory.

From this, a further difficulty becomes evident. Perhaps in New York, Washington DC, Madrid and London organizations may feasibly enforce extraordinary security measures to mitigate and prevent terrorism at the expense of openness and freedom for workers, clients and customers. Perhaps organizations in these cities can justify the deployment of excessive security on the basis that terrorism has happened here before and may again – chances, perhaps, cannot be taken. What of the many other cities around the world housing witnesses and victims of terrorism? Surely excessive security could not be tolerated in a place where devastating terrorism has never occurred?

Reactionary responses carry a number of burdens. Such responses embody a continuing unwillingness to confront terrorism’s root causes – an ongoing area of considerable academic endeavour that is beyond the scope of these pages and far beyond the scope of any business concern. But reactionary responses point to a deeper problem that should be a primary concern for business leaders, managers and working people – only treating the symptoms will often lead to a recurrence of the problem. As Haraway (2000) has argued, ‘We know how to win the last war but don’t have a clue what is going on now’. Business managers, workers, witnesses and victims of terrorism respond in such a way. In many respects we all come together to form ‘a broad, illiterate population’ (Haraway, 2000) in our fight against terrorism.

I have already identified in this chapter some of the research and literature that has contributed to our understanding of the meanings and consequences of terrorism for business. This literature also makes some strong cases for specific and practical actions that business leaders and managers can take in responding to terrorism. I have summarized the best of these in the following section as a way of moving forward and setting the stage for the emergence of what I argue is the best way to respond to terrorism as an act of violence and an emotion – what I call simulating security.

Simulations of Security

According to Zedner (2003: 154–155), security is ‘a slippery concept’, with multiple meanings that contain little clarity but can nonetheless loosely be defined as a subjective condition that incorporates a combination of ‘feeling safe’ and having ‘freedom from anxiety’. Security professionals and security studies scholars have long agreed that security can rarely be entirely impenetrable and 100 per cent reliable (Wood and Dupont, 2006; Zedner, 2003). The word ‘security’ is associated with a certain degree of incompleteness and vulnerability and it is generally acknowledged that complete, no-gaps security cannot be guaranteed. However, not all managers that are required to play a role in counter-terrorism are security managers, and the idea that security is insecure may not be as clear to some as it is to others. Non-security managers – managers for whom security is not their primary function – struggle with securitizing their businesses from risks, threats and potential disasters because these managers do not share the luxury of announcing that security cannot be guaranteed – their stakeholders do not have the same appreciation for the realities of security management. Customers, clients, workers and members of the public want to be able to believe that an organization’s security is complete and without gaps.

It is here that I argue we can uncover another contranym that sits alongside the contranym of terrorism – the contranym of security. The word ‘security’ embodies a certain incompleteness. In one sense, ‘security’ represents the regulation of disorder (Agamben, 2001). It is the act of physically and psychologically protecting people, places and assets and generating perceptions of safety and certainty. ‘Security’, however, will often fall short of these ideals. Despite massive efforts being devoted to security, breaches regularly occur. People break security barriers and cordons. People commit crimes, acts of violence and terrorism. When this occurs, it undermines the perceptions of security, safety and certainty held by those who were supposedly protected and secure. It is at these moments that seemingly secure people know that ‘security’ is not ‘secure’. Recalling for a moment Larry Daley’s realization in Night at the Museum (2006) that I introduced in Chapter 1 – now that I think of it, I never thought it was!

This insecure nature of security was illustrated in a popular television program in Australia called The Chaser’s War on Everything. Affectionately known simply as ‘The Chasers’, this group of young men comedically criticize many aspects of Australian political and social life. In what is now the group’s most renowned stunt, they turned their comedic eye to the Australia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit (APEC) that was attended by many world leaders including the then United States President, George W. Bush. The Chasers organized a motorcade of shiny black vehicles, flanked by jogging men in black suits and black sunglasses – they appeared to be ‘secret service’ agents and who would have had reason to doubt them? The black vehicles were all adorned with Canadian flags – a nation that The Chasers believed would not cause suspicion.

With the cameras rolling, this fictitious Canadian diplomatic motorcade – a nation not represented at APEC – rolled past several security cordons, at times being directed and guided by federal police officers, before The Chasers decided that the joke had gone too far. The Chasers pulled their motorcade to a halt out in front of the hotel where President Bush was staying and one of the crew leaped from the car wearing an Osama bin Laden costume. Amidst the outcries from police and the government in the aftermath of The Chasers’ stunt, security professionals, academics and business security experts asked the awkward questions about how one of Australia’s largest security operations – at a cost of $250 million – was so easily breached (Watson, 2007). Indeed, Australian security and law-enforcement agencies may consider themselves lucky that terrorists chose not to strike at the APEC summit. Among the props in this farcical security scenario were identification badges that were labelled with the word ‘Insecurity’, and the APEC security stickers on the vehicles read: ‘This vehicle belongs to a member of The Chaser’s War on Everything. This dude likes trees and poetry and certain types of carnivorous plants excite him’ (Braithwaite and Petrie, 2007). In their defence The Chasers issued a statement that they never intended to breach any security cordons and they were shocked the prank was so successful. Despite Australia’s then Foreign Minister Alexander Downer deflecting the security gap as unproblematic since The Chasers were not intent on physical harm, it remains a day of infamy in Australia when a comedy team were ushered past snipers, federal police, and intelligence and security agents supposedly during a time of intense and spectacular security. As an epilogue that would be funny if it had not demonstrated how ineffective security can be, the charges against The Chasers were ultimately thrown out of court because police and security forces had given ‘tacit permission’ for the comedy crew to enter the high-security zone near President Bush’s hotel.

What I intend to suggest with this story is that establishing high-quality security is exceedingly difficult. At best, security to prevent terrorism is problematic, at its worst it can be viewed as a futile exercise in attempts to prevent terrorism. This story serves as a metaphor for counter-terrorism efforts throughout the world’s cities. It shows that we all play a role in our insecurity. We are the police officers waving the terrorists through. Our security is a revolving doorway through which terrorists travel. We are precarious and vulnerable witnesses and victims, complicit in the terrorism we are subjected to. Traditional notions of corporate security and risk management are unreliable resources in the so called ‘War on Terror’ and I argue that a new, alternative and emergent method for preventing terrorism is needed.

The contranym of security is paradoxically clear. ‘Security’ has oppositional meanings. In one sense, security is being secure. In another sense, security is deeply insecure. By corporeally and physically enhancing security, we can become more secure. By enhancing the visible aspects of security, people who rely on this security can feel and believe that security is secure. One meaning requires a response that physically improves security, the other requires a response that improves perceptions of certainty and safety that security can – and perhaps should – deliver. By physically improving security it is reasonable to assume that people will feel more secure. The opposite will also hold – doing little to physically improve security will generate both a physical and emotional vulnerability. However, by visibly improving security – perhaps with little corporeal or actual improvement to security – it is similarly reasonable to assume that people will feel more secure. Moreover, I suggest that focusing on the visible aspects of security as a way of fighting terrorism is far less arduous and costly than vainly attempting to close all security gaps (most likely without success). Making security truly secure will likely always be an ideal rather than a realistic goal. Instead of hiring expensive specialist security guards, minimum-wage security guards may suffice in generating visibly improved security. Monitoring and maintaining security cameras can be costly. Perhaps the presence of security cameras – even if they are not regularly monitored and operational – will be enough to deter would-be terrorists and criminals and generate perceptions of safety. Believing security is effective may be more important to consumers, customers, clients, workers and managers than complete, fortressed, no-gaps security. Deterring terrorism – as violence and as an emotion – will likely be more effective than overwhelming and overblown security. I call this simulating security through generating an image of safety.

This is loosely related to what Coaffee (2003: 160) has described as an inside and outside discourse of security. In Coaffee’s view there are key groups that can influence security outcomes for businesses and organizations in cities. The pro-security inside discourses are fostered and maintained by ‘urban managers’, ‘political authorities’ and corporations (Coaffee, 2003: 160). The ‘outside discourse’ is embodied in civil liberties groups and other community interest groups. I agree with Coaffee’s (2003) contention that there is more-or-less a general consensus among urban populations that security should be improved – even if this improvement is only a visible improvement – yet this improvement does not necessarily need to embody the militarist ideology of urban fortification. I suggest that simulated security can achieve many of these goals and can do so without creating a ‘fortress city’. In Chapter 6 I return to the meaning and development of simulated security as described by the city-dwelling business leaders and managers that I interviewed for this book.

Wilson (2007) argues that ‘The best security measures are sometimes simple and cheap. They’re usually low-tech, physical and human. Some of the most advanced systems, on the other hand, are brittle and insecure’. Georgio Agamben (2001) wrote shortly after 9/11 that we face ‘extreme and most dangerous developments in the thought of security’ and while discipline produces order, security seeks to regulate disorder. I argue that this type of security was once the domain of the state but now operates from decentralized stages in cities where organizations are asked to close the gaps in security to play their part in counter-terrorism. Organizations are not well placed to provide this security. Corporate logics, the need to maintain a profitable enterprise and the limitations of risk management techniques means that good decisions will not always be made. As Davis (in Wilson, 2007) points out, whilst billions continues to be spent on high-tech counter-terrorism equipment and training to prevent fantastic possibilities of biological, chemical, radiological or nuclear attacks, the unsophisticated car-bomb continues to be a potent terrorist weapon. Something similar can be said of the suicide bomber. Suicide bombers are thinking, improvising, organic, killing machines. If a would-be suicide bomber plans to target a densely populated location but discovers that location to be fortified and securitized, they can simply go somewhere else to complete their attack. In Israel it is believed that terrorists seeking to target shopping malls often find them to be protected by security guards. The terrorists simply move their bomb to another populated area – often in the middle of a crosswalk as people are crossing the road. A ‘guns, guards and gates’ approach to security will likely not stop a car or suicide bomber (Wilson, 2007):

Conclusion: The Counter-terrorism Laboratory

These intersecting narratives that I have explored in this chapter are not mutually exclusive and cannot be clearly distinguished. The problem of business counter-terrorism is one characterized by these narratives when understood in relation to the four coordinates for understanding contemporary terrorism that I identified in Chapter 2. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, business leaders and managers face the complex threat of terrorism in their everyday business. It is a problem involving witnesses and victims, simulations and images of violence, distance and cities, politics and ideology, locations, histories, the global news media, and intersecting narratives of international terrorism, workers, and management and security responses. These variables, factors and contexts form a narrative – a narrative that is at times disorienting, incongruent, and paradoxical. These narratives involve some mythical creatures of the complex twenty-first century where corporate logics of risk meet international terrorism and, as they so often have been, working people are the collateral damage. In this process I am a witness on two fronts – both an insider and an outsider. I am a worker in the contemporary city and therefore a subject of this book. I can at any moment become a target, like millions of working people in cities throughout the world. Yet I am also a researcher, a writer and an academic. I control narratives and discourses and in the coming chapters I speak on behalf of other targets, witnesses and victims that I interviewed for this book.

Much like the exploration of terrorism’s meanings and the consequences for witnesses and victims that was the subject of the previous chapter, I find the literature that explores the consequences and meanings of terrorism for business and management to be lacking in its failure to account for a number of crucial dimensions for understanding contemporary terrorism and its impact on working people. There can be little doubt that businesses and working people have been the target of choice for contemporary terrorists. The 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7 attacks have served as profound symbolic targets that accentuated the vulnerability and precariousness of working people in city-dwelling organizations. This is a crucial contemporary problem for business leaders and managers, and the corporate counter-terrorism response should be considered a vital part of strategic organizational planning. Yet I do not base this argument on the assumption that terrorists pose a clear and present danger to organizational or worker survival. Rather, I suggest that it is the power of terrorism to generate witnesses and victims small and large distances from terrorism’s flashpoint that requires swift and decisive corporate responses. In this way, corporate counter-terrorism can be viewed as primarily a task of mitigating, preventing and protecting against terror rather than militarily defending organizational spaces from unrelenting terrorists who we are told are inspired by a fundamentalist world-view and who may or may not be hiding in caves in the borderlands separating Afghanistan and Pakistan. I do not want to frame the problem of terrorism and the consequences for working people and businesses only in terms of the threat posed by al-Qaeda or the so-called ‘Global War on Terror’. I suggest that terrorism works best when nothing explodes. Terrorism is most felt by the people who live to bear witness. The witnesses are the victims – these are the true terrorism experts.