An over-used and much-abused word in corporations, as in "we are at war with the competition". The individuals deploying the word have usually never fought in a real war, and overlook the fact that it is not normal practice in business competition to bomb, shoot or poison rivals, unless you happen to be associated with the Mafia or international drug cartels. However, the adoption of the war mindset sometimes acts as a convenient rationalization for their own personal adoption and encouragement of dysfunctional behaviours such as collusion, duplicity, fraud etc. ("we were at war - we had to do something").