Bridging the gap between cyberwar and cyberpeace

‘Critical security studies’ has come to occupy a prominent place within the lexicon of International Relations and security studies over the past two decades. While disagreement exists about the boundaries of this sub-discipline or indeed some of its central commitments, in this article we argue that we can indeed talk about a ‘critical security studies’ project orienting around three central themes. The first is a fundamental critique of traditional (realist) approaches to security; the second is a concern with the politics of security — the question of what security does politically; while the third is with the ethics of security — the question of what progressive practices look like regarding security. We suggest that it is the latter two of these concerns with the politics and ethics of security that ultimately define the ‘critical security studies’ project. Taking the so-called Welsh School and Copenhagen School frameworks as archetypal examples of ‘critical security studies’ (and its limits), in this article we argue that despite its promises, scholarship in this tradition has generally fallen short of providing us with a sophisticated, convincing account of either the politics or the ethics of security. At stake in the failure to provide such an account is the fundamental question of whether we need a ‘critical security studies’ at all.

Laura J. Shepherd, ed. (2013). Critical Approaches to Security: An Introduction to Theories and Methods . Routledge, London and New York, 304 pp., $160.00 hardcover (ISBN-13 978-0-415-68017-2), $54.95 paperback (ISBN-13 978-0-415-68016-5). Mark B. Salter and Can E. Mutlu, eds. (2013). Research Methods in Critical Security Studies: An Introduction . Routledge, London and New York, 256 pp., $150.00 hardcover (ISBN-13 978-0-415-53539-7), $51.95 paperback (ISBN-13 978-0-415-53540-3). Jacob L. Stump and Priya Dixit. (2013). Critical Terrorism Studies: An Introduction to Research Methods . Routledge, London and New York, 208 pp., $145.00 hardcover (ISBN-13 978-1-415-62046-8), $46.95 paperback (ISBN-13 978-0-415-62047-5). Claudia Aradau, Jef Huysmans, Andrew Neal, and Nadine Voelkner, eds. (2014). Critical Security Methods: New Frameworks for Analysis . Routledge, London and New York, 230 pp., $150.00 hardcover (ISBN-13 978-0-415-71294-1), $44.95 paperback (ISBN-13 978-0-415-71295-8). “There is a point at which methods devour themselves” (Fanon 1952, 12). Almost 20 years since the publication of Krause and Williams's edited volume Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (1997), critical security studies (CSS) has reached a moment in which critiques of more traditional or mainstream modes of studying the politics of war, security, and violence are supplemented by a great deal of explicit attention to their methods and methodologies for doing so. The last few years have witnessed a sudden proliferation of textbooks on methods for critical security studies that have attempted to chart the field and provide guidance for students or newcomers on methods for conducting research consistent with its values and goals. The four volumes discussed in this review essay follow on the heels of numerous other textbooks that attempt to map the terrain of security studies, such as Hansen and Buzan (2009), Peoples and Vaughan-Williams’s edited compilation of key and illustrative works (2010), Jarvis and Holland (2014), and the second edition of Karin Fierke’s Critical Approaches to International Security (2015 [2007]). In recent years, the establishment of several journals, including Critical Security Studies and particularly Security Dialogue , as well as Journal of Global Security Studies (an ISA journal) and European Journal of International Security (a BISA journal), that are dedicated to pluralistic studies of security have also suggested the popularity and continued innovation of diverse strands of scholarship that can be grouped as “critical security studies.” Furthermore, the selection of “Methods, Methodologies, and Innovation” to frame the 2014 Millennium conference and subsequent special issue also suggests a great deal of both interest and tension around the question of method and methodology for critical, interpretative, and pluralistic scholars, including the question of whether or not issues of “method” should be … lw487{at}cam.ac.uk

What, then, are the fundamentals of society that require change to produce a progressive politics? Marx’s answer was that society is fundamentally about the production of the essentials (and when that is achieved, the frivolities) of life. Political identity is determined by the individual’s relation to the production process (their social class). Those who own the means of production in any society benefit at the expense of others, and so the ‘point’ is to reveal this fundamental organization of society, to mobilize the oppressed to change the society in their interest. However, what if society is not fundamentally about production in the way Marx suggests? What if the various identities produced in activities other than production are not subordinate to their class identity? Indeed, perhaps there is no single fundamental nature to social organization in all times and in all places, but rather the various forms of social activity and identity organize differently, contingently at different times and in different places, and so progressive social change must look to multiple sites of fundamental oppression. As industrial capitalism grew and became globalized, and particularly as capitalism became post-industrial, a body of social theory grew that made just such a claim. What I have sketched, in admittedly a very schematic way, is the broad scope of cri-tical social theory and its primary line of division. Those who follow Marx’s theory of a fundamentally class-based society are found on one side of this division. This stream is often termed ‘German’, in that Marx and a good number of those that followed him were either German or based in Germany – most notably, in the twentieth century, a group of theorists gathered in Frankfurt (the ‘Frankfurt School’), who coined the term Critical Theory. On the other side are those who argue that class and production are not fundamental. This second stream is often termed ‘French’ for the influence of a number of French thinkers in a tradition also usually labelled ‘post-structural’. Foremost among these are Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard. There are, of course, near infinite complexities within these broad areas of social theory, and considerable overlap at their margins. No post-structural thinker, for example, would reject the importance of the basic Marxist critique of capitalist society to understanding (and changing) the present. However, there is a significant stream of post-Marxist thinking that takes culture and ideology very seriously indeed. My objective in this chapter is to explore what has happened as critical social theory, in its many varieties, has been turned on the questions of international security to forge a field of study generally termed Critical Security Studies. I begin with a short discussion of the origins of Critical Security Studies, as it emerged inthe aftermath of the collapse of the Cold War and in response to the problems that collapse revealed with traditional security studies. Initially, the leading theoretical position identified with the term critical security was constructivism, and so I follow the discussion of origins with a short exploration of the literature on social construction. There is a real question, however, as to whether the constructivist position fits with a commitment to critical social theory, and so that section is followed by two that explore the deployment of first post-Marxist and then post-structural social theory to questions of security. I conclude by considering a recent attempt to bridge the divisions I sketch in the rest of the chapter, revealing in the process some of the ways that some divisions appear inescapable.Security Studies was, in its inception and early practice, very much a ‘policy science’. It grew along with the nuclear age, operating under the shadow of a future nuclear war,with the avowed commitment to prevent it if possible, and win it if necessary. The concern of Security Studies was, in the words of one of its staunchest defenders, ‘the study of the threat, use and control of military force’ (Walt 1991). It was concerned with interpreting the world of military strategy, not to change it fundamentally, but to make it better on its own terms. Providing direct policy advice to those in control of states’ militaries, particularly to nuclear-armed militaries, was very much a part of the Security Studies understanding of its purpose. Furthermore, the depth of that future shadow, and the degree to which it represented a ‘clear and present danger’, served as a strong barrier to any alteration in the study of security. By the late 1980s, however, it seemed that a change in the nuclear standoff betweenEast and West was in the offing. Mikhail Gorbachev was making a raft of changes to Soviet policy, both domestic and foreign, including offering truly significant nuclear arms reductions (Gorbachev 1987). The end of the Cold War opened what has been termed a ‘thinking space’ in the study of global security (George 1994). In large part, this thinking space resulted from the manifest failure of political realism, the theory underpinning traditional Security Studies, to not only predict the end of the Cold War, but also even to account for it once it had happened (Gusterson 1999). That failure created conditions in which self-consciously critical work to questions of security could be taken seriously in the academy. What has come to be known as Critical Security Studies grew from this moment inpolitical and intellectual time. The term itself emerged on the margins of a conference held at York University in 1994, and served as the title for the volume produced by that conference. That book, Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases, is still seen as an important point of origin of the Critical Security Studies idea. The book and label, however, really served as a point around which a number of strands of intellectual development could coalesce. A group of graduate students working with Ken Booth at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth were bringing post-Marxist critical theory to bear on questions of security (Booth 2007: xv-xvi). A number of other scholars, mainly at the University of Minnesota and York University, were developing ideas about constructivism in relation to security (Latham 1998; Mutimer 1998; Williams 1992, 1998; Milliken 2001; Price 1997; Weldes 1999). In other places, ideas drawn from French social theory were also being turned to questions of security (Campbell 1992; Dalby 1990). At the same time, there were at least two other strands of thought that drew on formsof social critique to think about security, but which have not subsequently been captured, by and large, by the ‘Critical Security Studies’ label. The first is variously known as ‘the Copenhagen School’ or ‘securitization studies’. (See Chapter 5 in this volume). Perhaps more interestingly, many scholars were thinking about gender and international relations, including international security (Enloe 1983; Peterson 1992; Sylvester 1994; Whitworth 1998). The Feminist IR scholarship that has grown from this strand of thinking, despite significant overlaps with the work of Critical Security Studies, and severe theoretical divisions within it, continues to exist outside the ambit of Critical Security Studies.

Despite the effort of the Federal Government of Nigeria to improve the standard of instructional delivery process in secondary schools via the introduction of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) innovations, the attainment of the ICT objectives in secondary schools still remains far-fetched. The study investigated awareness, acceptance and adoption of ICT innovations among secondary school students. Three research questions guided the study and survey research design was adopted. The population of the study consisted of all 7012 students in the 18 public secondary schools in the study area. The sample for the study comprised 360 students obtained through multi-stage sampling procedure. “Awareness of ICT Innovations among Secondary School Students” (Awareness), “Acceptance of ICT Innovations by Secondary School Students” (Acceptance) and “Adoption of ICT Innovations by Secondary School Students” (Adoption) were constructed by the researchers and used for data collection. The instruments were validated by three experts. The findings revealed that secondary school students in Aguata Local Government Area (LGA) of Anambra State are aware of ICT innovations, and have accepted them for learning. It was further revealed that the said students have adopted ICT innovations for learning to a low extent. In line with the results of the study, it was suggested that State government have to ensure that ICT innovations are made accessible to students to adopt for learning and research purposes.

This article demonstrates the nuances of the critical security studies literature and argues for the benefits of employing a (modified) post-structuralist approach to security. The proposed “modification” is necessary to avoid the inclination within post-structural approaches to conflate epistemological commitments with ontological ones. Using Stephen K. White's arguments for the viability of “weak ontologies,” I demonstrate that a critical post-structuralist approach need not be anathema to the making of claims, nor should it be seen as suffering from a paralytic disjuncture from the “real world.” Two important points that counter familiar critiques leveled against a critical post-structuralist security studies are then introduced. First, acts of re-construction can be critical in the most fundamental ontological sense, though they need not employ the “strong ontologies” that appeal unproblematically to external grounds to make their claims. Second, acts of re-construction can emanate directly from post-structuralist commitments, where deconstruction is both a first step and an ethic to bring to engagement with the status quo. Hence, maintaining critical commitments can mean being reflexive about the indeterminacy of the claims that are ultimately made while being accountable to them.

We offer a rejoinder to Security Dialogue’s call for reparative work on race and racism in Critical Security Studies, questioning the ability of a discipline at the heart of an Antiblack world, to engage in truly reparative practices. The attempt to incorporate questions of race and racism into the discipline requires a disavowal, as it denies that Critical Security Studies emerged from and is embedded in systems, structures and institutions of power that rely on Antiblackness. This leads to a displacement, for it assumes that race and racism remain separable from Critical Security Studies, refusing to acknowledge that the discipline has always been part of the problem. Thus, we make two main points in response to calls for reparation from within Critical Security Studies. Firstly, that there can be no openings for truly reparative work from the position of the discipline, it remains within the grounds of Antiblackness. Secondly, that there can be no repair of Critical Security Studies, there can be no ethico-political future for it other than abolition.

Despite the importance of information technology (IT) innovation in today’s digitalized world, little research attention has been paid to examining how firms can incentivize IT innovation. To fill this gap, the current study investigates the impact of managerial incentives provided to chief executive officers (CEOs) on IT innovation, measured by the number of IT patents. In particular, we examine the role of risk-taking incentives provided to CEOs, captured by the sensitivity of CEO wealth to stock return volatility (i.e., Vega). Vega can motivate CEOs to engage in risky IT innovation projects by aligning their wealth with firm-specific risk. In so doing, we focus on how CEOs’ IT-related human capital (i.e., IT education and IT experience) moderates the relationship between Vega and IT innovation. Our empirical analyses reveal that a higher Vega encourages CEOs to support more IT innovation; more importantly, the impact of Vega on the amount of IT patents is stronger for firms with CEOs who have higher levels of IT education and IT experience. Our study contributes to research and practice by conceptualizing a CEO’s IT-related human capital and validating its moderating role in the relationship between risk-taking incentives provided to the CEO and the amount of IT innovation.

Information technology (IT) innovation can be defined as the creation and new organizational application of digital computer and communication technologies. The paper suggests that IT innovation theory needs to be expanded to analyze IT innovations in kind that exhibit atypical discontinuities in IT innovation behaviors by studying two questions. First, can a model of disruptive IT innovations be created to understand qualitative changes in IT development processes and their outcomes so that they can be related to architectural discontinuities in computing capability? Second, to what extent can the observed turmoil among systems development organizations that has been spawned by Internet computing be understood as a disruptive IT innovation? To address the first question, a model of disruptive IT innovation is developed. The model defines a disruptive IT innovation as an architectural innovation originating in the information technology base that has subsequent pervasive and radical impacts on development processes and their outcomes. These base innovations establish necessary but not sufficient conditions for subsequent innovation behaviors. To address the second question, the impact of Internet computing on eight leading-edge systems development organizations in the United States and Finland is investigated. The study shows that the adoption of Internet computing in these firms has radically impacted their IT innovation both in development processes and services.

The adoption of new Information Technology (IT) innovations has led to increased uncertainty among employees, a greater demand for security measures, and more entry points for cyber-attacks, which all increase the risk of data breaches for firms. Despite the prevalence of discussions around this issue, there has been a lack of empirical research examining the data breach risk associated with IT innovations. To address this gap, we have developed arguments based on an organizational learning theoretical framework that explains how IT innovativeness can exacerbate data breach risk. Through our analysis of a sample of data breaches that occurred between 2013 and 2021, we have discovered that there is a positive association between firm IT innovativeness and the risk of data breaches. We also find that the effects of IT innovativeness can vary under certain conditions. For example, we find that the positive relationship between IT innovativeness and data breach risk is mitigated when managers possess IT expertise or when firms have established extensive board connections with cybersecurity managers. Moreover, we find that the relationship between IT innovativeness and data breach risk is amplified in complex environments but not in dynamic or munificent ones. This study takes the lead in advancing the theoretical understanding and empirical validation of security-related risks associated with IT innovations. Moreover, our findings serve as a timely reminder for research and practice to carefully consider the implications of introducing novel technologies into firms and the potential dark side consequences that may arise. Additionally, this study underscores the importance of understanding organizational learning in risk assessment and change management, as well as the critical role of contextual factors in moderating the unintended security-related consequences linked to IT innovations.

This chapter provides a partial history of the label ‘Critical Security Studies’ and the way it has developed and fragmented since the early 1990s. It considers the primary claims of the major divisions that have emerged within the literatures to which the label has been applied: constructivism, critical theory, and poststructuralism. It looks at the 1994 conference held at York University in Toronto entitled Strategies in Conflict: Critical Approaches to Security Studies, which spawned a book called Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (1997b), and Security: A New Framework for Analysis (1998), which was published to serve as a relatively comprehensive statement of ‘securitization studies’, or the Copenhagen School. The chapter argues that Critical Security Studies needs to foster an ‘ethos of critique’ in either the study or refusal of security. Finally, it examines Ken Booth’s views on poststructuralism as part of a broad Critical Security Studies.

Publics are an undertheorised and somewhat marginal presence in critical security studies. This article argues that a better understanding of publics can advance our understanding of the governance as well as the contestation of security regimes and practices. We develop this argument in three parts. First, we discuss the marginality of publics in critical security studies while highlighting those limited instances where publics have been engaged. Second, we direct attention to emerging research on publics in cognate disciplines, focusing in particular on the literature about material publics. We distil from this work some useful lessons for security studies. In a final section we suggest two research moves for promoting a stronger focus on publics within critical security studies. We conclude that a focus on material publics can furnish security studies with a better understanding of the phenomenon of politics.

This chapter provides a partial history of the label ‘Critical Security Studies’ and the way it has developed and fragmented since the early 1990s. It considers the primary claims of the major divisions that have emerged within the literatures to which the label has been applied: constructivism, critical theory, and poststructuralism. It looks at the 1994 conference held at York University in Toronto entitled Strategies in Conflict: Critical Approaches to Security Studies, which spawned a book called Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (1997b), and Security: A New Framework for Analysis (1998), which was published to serve as a relatively comprehensive statement of ‘securitization studies’, or the Copenhagen School. The chapter argues that Critical Security Studies needs to foster an ‘ethos of critique’ in either the study or refusal of security. Finally, it examines Ken Booth’s views on poststructuralism as part of a broad Critical Security Studies.

Since information technologies have become critical to business success as a tool for organizational innovation, successful implementation of information technology (IT) innovation is viewed as one of the most crucial tasks for many organizations. This paper examines the effects of the contextual factors on the implementation of the client/server system as an interrelated IT innovation. The authors clarify the concept of IT innovation by distinguishing between IT innovation object and IT innovation process and provide the conceptual framework for IT innovation process. Four types of IT innovation implementation were classified according to the dimensions of implementation scope and implementation pace. They developed a set of relevant propositions and examined them through multiple case studies following Yin's case-study methodology.

Clinical managers play a crucial role in securing the implementation and sustainability of information technology (IT) innovation in health care. Yet, not all clinical managers are willing and able to support IT innovation, particularly when the institutional logics of an IT innovation challenge their professional practice. We investigate how clinical managers use their hybrid identities to reconcile differences among competing institutional logics that affect IT innovation. Based on three examples of IT innovation (telehealth for obstructive sleep apnoea, telehealth for heart failure, and electrocardiograms) in a health care organization in England, we identify three roles in IT innovation (innovation advocate, innovation broker, and innovation laggard) that clinical managers enacted in response to three degrees of conflict between institutional logics (no conflict, moderate conflict, and high conflict), respectively. We make the following contributions. First, we demonstrate how clinical managers' perception of their hybrid role in relation to their professional identity influences their response to the conflicting institutional demands of IT innovation. We conclude that clinical managers' fragmented identities can compromise their ability to effectively manage IT innovation in health care. Second, our findings raise implications for understanding the role of professionals' hybrid identities in the implementation of digital transformation at the intersection of multiple institutional logics.

This study investigates how transformational leadership, through shared leadership, predicts followers’ information technology (IT) innovation adoption at work. We further examine how management innovation acts as an organizational-level enabler, enhancing the impact of leadership on followers’ IT innovation adoption. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a multi-source, multi-level field study of 5884 employees and 92 of their leaders in small- and medium-sized German companies. Data were analyzed by applying multi-level moderated-mediation analysis. The study findings revealed that shared leadership mediated the relationship between perceived transformational leadership and followers’ IT innovation adoption at the individual level. Moreover, organizational-level management innovation moderated the relationship between transformational leadership and IT innovation adoption, mediated by shared leadership. Taken together, our findings indicate that transformational leadership has the power to motivate followers to lead themselves toward implementing digital change. Our study contributes to shaping a multi-level organizational context that promotes IT innovation adoption at work.