John Budd published an interesting piece on his Blog “Wither Work?” titled “Business Is Not a War, a Jungle, a Machine, or a Game: Rejecting Narratives that are Unhealthy for Work and Workers“.
“In fact, there are many war metaphors used in business: in addition to the “war for talent,” we can see references to competitors as the enemy, strategies as plans of attack, cash as a war chest, competition as a battle (“capture market share”), sometimes even employees as troops (“rally the troops”). All of these portray business as focused on beating the competition rather than producing an excellent product or service and make it legitimate to do this by any means necessary. War metaphors make it seem necessary for business to adopt hierarchical, authoritarian, military-like chains of command. All of these should be rejected. Business should be viewed as focused on excellent products and