Sales · Malcolm Glazer and Manchester United: acquisition slice by slice (2003-2005), Rather than a single offer that would have united the resistance, Malcolm Glazer acquired Manchester United by accumulating shares. First tranche on 2 March 2003: around £9 million for 2.9% of the capital through the Red Football holding company. By the end of 2003, the stake rose from 3.17% to nearly 15%, then passed 19% in the summer of 2004. Each purchase, too small to trigger a decisive reaction, prepared the next, up to the buy-out of Cubic Expression's stake taking Glazer to 56.9% and triggering the mandatory offer. On 16 May 2005, despite the fierce opposition of the supporters, the takeover was secured: patient salami-slicing succeeded where a frontal assault would have failed.
Political · The salami tactics of the Cold War according to Schelling, Thomas Schelling theorised, drawing on the manoeuvres of the Cold War, the way in which powers eroded the adversary's sphere of influence by imperceptible degrees. His formulation became canonical: begin an intrusion “on a scale too small to provoke a reaction, and increase it by imperceptible degrees, never presenting the sudden, dramatic challenge that would call for a committed response”. Each advance, taken in isolation, did not justify a costly escalation; yet their sum redrew the map. This reading illuminates many fait-accompli conflicts in which the aggressor advances below the opposing camp's reaction threshold.
Diplomatic · The erosion of red lines through successive faits accomplis, In international strategy, the salami tactic describes the step-by-step advance of an actor who pushes back the boundary of the tolerable without ever crossing in one move the threshold that would trigger a united response. Each isolated step, a contested zone occupied, a forward post, a precedent created, appears too minor to justify a major confrontation, so that the opposing party postpones its reaction to “next time”. The central difficulty, as the strategic literature analyses, is that the red line is never clearly crossed: it is nibbled away. The camp on the receiving end finds itself, slice after slice, facing a transformed balance of power that no single episode would have sufficed to impose.
Judicial · The procedural strategy of exhausting the opposing party, In some litigation, a party with superior means multiplies the procedural incidents: applications, requests for postponement, appeals on minor points, repeated exchanges of submissions. No act, taken in isolation, is illegitimate; their accumulation aims to exhaust the adversary financially and mentally until they accept an unfavourable settlement to be done with it. This practice, known to practitioners as procedural attrition, illustrates harassment within a legal framework: victory comes not from a decisive argument but from the weariness produced by repetition. Courts try to curb its abuses through penalties for abuse of process, precisely because each isolated act remains below the threshold of fault.
Business · Scope creep: the progressive extension of a project's scope, A client orders a service with a defined scope, then, once the provider is committed, adds along the way “quick” requests: a feature here, a modification there, an adjustment “while we're at it”. Each request, too small to justify a formal amendment, is granted to preserve the relationship. This phenomenon, called scope creep in project management, is a typical case of involuntary or deliberate harassment: the actual workload drifts far from the initial specification without any single request having appeared abusive. The remedy recognised by project managers is to log and bill each change from the first deviation, restoring the reaction threshold that fragmentation had made disappear.
Everyday life · The nibbling of rules at home, A child accepts bedtime, then each evening claims “just ten more minutes”, a glass of water, one last story, an exception “because it's Friday”. No single demand deserves a confrontation on its own; the parent, tired, gives way one step at a time. Week after week, the initial rule has melted away without any explicit decision having revised it. This domestic mechanism is the most widespread illustration of harassment: the victim perceives reasonable and isolated concessions, never the overall drift. Educational approaches recommend setting a clear rule and refusing piecemeal renegotiation, that is, restoring the overall limit that the nibbling seeks to dissolve.
