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The corporate security professional: A hybrid agent between corporate and national security

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Abstract

In our age of globalization and complex threat environments, every business is called upon to manage security. This tendency is reflected in the fact that a wide range of businesses increasingly think about security in broad terms and strive to translate national security concerns into corporate speech. This article argues that the profession of the security manager has become central for understanding how the relationship between national and corporate security is currently negotiated. The national security background of most private sector security managers makes the corporate security professional inside the company a powerful hybrid agent. By zooming in on the profession and the practice of national security inside companies, the article raises questions about where to draw the line between corporate security and national security along with the political consequences of the constitution of such boundaries.

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Notes

  1. As the Department of Homeland Security (2002, p. ii) has put it, ‘the entire society to overcome a new and very complex challenge’.

  2. This construction of the liberal marked thus came to define the end of mercantilism. Trade came to be regarded as the principal path to liberty, which could capture the positive aspects of expansion, progress, growth and individual striving.

  3. For a discussion of the difference between neoliberal and neo-republican security governance, see Petersen and Tjalve (2013). Where a neo-republican mode of governance is reliant on organicist means of social construction (appeals to communal duty; facilitation of self-regulation), a neoliberal draws on economic or individualist instruments of social control (appeals to economic self-interest).

  4. ASIS is the world’s largest association for security managers. In the United States alone, ASIS has approximately 24 000 members (www.asisonline.org).

  5. The material will be analysed through a discourse analysis focusing on the identity constructions. In the analysis of both the interviews and survey, there are no implied assumptions about the possibility of gaining undisturbed access to the inner lives of the interview persons (Kvale, 1996, pp. 38–58; Gubrium and Holstein, 2003). Instead of assuming the possibility of correspondence between either the material world or the inner thoughts of the interviewed persons and the academic results, the interview/survey is considered an ‘active text’ created in the interaction between interviewer and interviewed. The interviewer is expected to present their ‘preferred self’ (Gubrium and Holstein, 2003; 1997; Järvinen 2005). The object of scientific interest is the meaning created in the interaction between interviewed and interviewer.

  6. The selection of companies for the survey was based on size rather than type of business. This also means that none of the participating companies are providing security services themselves.

  7. In total, 87 American CEOs have participated in the survey.

  8. ASIS has 2800 members in Europe and 27 169 members in the United States (www.asisonline.com).

  9. According to the Business Security Survey 2004, 63 per cent of the British companies (n=100) agreed that 9/11 has ‘strongly influenced’ their approach to security.

  10. Rigakos (2002) observes a similar trend in the private security sector (among the companies selling security services to ‘normal’ companies), where conduct is regulated by their belonging to an ‘old boys’ network.

  11. The term ‘governmentality’ refers to that which Rose (1993, p. 283) has termed the ‘formulas of rule’; that is, the rationalities governing the particular security procedures, techniques and mechanisms. See Johnson (1995) for an attempt to define analytically the link between governmentalities and profession (as institutionalization of expertise).

  12. For a definition of neo-republicanism and the difference to neoliberalism, see Petersen and Tjalve (2013).

  13. Similarly, Ridley (2011) argues how the concept of resilience is taking up a central role in the description of the corporate social responsibility of critical infrastructure companies, using the cases of British railways and Microsoft.

  14. For a historical account on how the relation between market and security politics has been articulated, see Hont (2005).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, Trine Villumsen Berling, Ulrik Pram Gad, Lene Hansen, Peter Marcus Kristensen, Jeppe Strandsbjerg and Casper Sylvest for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. Also thanks to Peter Marcus Kristensen for his invaluable research assistance and work on the 2011 Survey mentioned in this article.

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Petersen, K. The corporate security professional: A hybrid agent between corporate and national security. Secur J 26, 222–235 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/sj.2013.13

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