International Journal on Criminology Volume 4, Number 2, Winter 2016 | Page 100

International Journal on Criminology
(the number of members was 257 at the end of 1955 and over 2000 by the end of
the 1950s 2 ). Be this as it may, although some large American companies had such a
service in their organigram, this function was at the bottom of company hierarchy in
the middle of the twentieth century. For example, General Electric had appointed a
“chief warden” on grade N-6 (Chandler 1988). So, up to the middle of the last century,
and even in the United States, the role mainly involved aspects of surveillance and
was not yet recognized and considered legitimate by the various stakeholders of the
company.
It was only from the 1960s and 1970s that this function really took off in
the United States. Indeed, large American companies considered it to be a major
condition of their international development. It was during this period that American
companies were expanding abroad at fast rate. So, convinced that security was at the
core of commercial warfare, IBM set up security management tools from the 1970s,
requesting methodological support from the International Association of Chiefs of
Police (IACP). The primary focus was on protecting the company against dangers
posed by extremists, as it considered itself exposed to the risk of hostage-taking
and ransom demands. This resulted in training for all employees of its subsidiaries,
provided by the department of security: Security. A management Style. A course of
instruction in corporate protective service. IBM as a Target for Terrorists (Mattelart
2007, 153). IBM’s proactive stance against the terrorist threat was not an isolated
example. It was widely shared by the largest multinationals throughout the world
which, at the time, were almost exclusively American.
In France, as in many European countries, especially the Mediterranean
countries, it was quite different, except for a few rare groups in the coal, oil and
gas sector, which very soon provided themselves with such management. To this
effect, as Philippe Madelin describes, the French State group Elf-Erap had an internal
protection service which maintained strong links with intelligence services from the
years between 1960 and 1970 (Madelin 2007, 97). The integration of internal security
services into European companies must be linked to their international development,
especially in unstable regions, to the proliferation of threats, even if some are at times
exaggerated because of the media attention they attract, to the weight of law on these
matters which has considerably increased during the 2000s and to the consequent
increase in the responsibility falling to companies. 3
Development of security at the heart of business was empirical and its
development continues to be so (Juillet, Hassid, and Pellerin 2012). Hostage-taking
on planes belonging to Air France between the mid-1980s and 1990, development of
2
M.A. Davidson, The Gold Standard, Asis Celebrates 50 Years of Advancing Security (Asis International,
2004).
3
For further information on this subject, see O. Hassid, and A. Masraff, La sécurité en entreprise
(Paris: Maxima, 2010), J.-P. Vuillerme, “Positionnement et périmètres des directions sûreté,” Sécurité
& Stratégie (October 2013), 5–20. and L. Griot, “Portrait des directions de sécurité et de sûreté,”
Sécurité & Stratégie October 2013, December 2013 (14): 26–33.
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