As a method of analysis, organizational behavior is appropriate for characterizing nontraditional entities, such as terrorist organizations. Similar to traditional organizations, terrorists organize into groups (i.e., an organization with culture and objectives), are guided by leaders (i.e., leadership theory), and seek performance (e.g., motivation theory, culture and ideology, and organizational learning). This quantitative correlational research investigated terrorist organizations, exploring organizational behavior and various leadership theories in order to discern predictive elements. The objectives included collecting data, applying statistical models, and analyzing terrorist organizations with the intent of creating preventative counterterrorism-intelligence techniques. The subsequent recommendations may assist intelligence and law enforcement organizations in identifying, understanding, and predicting terrorist behavior based upon organizational behavior, leadership, and performance. This research offers new knowledge regarding organizational behavior and leadership by providing a more thorough understanding of the ways in which these theories apply to the profiling of the behaviors of terrorist organizations. Specifically, the contributions of this research include the identification of: (1) a correlation between the Long Term Orientation of a nation and the performance of terrorist organizations; (2) the preference of terrorist organizations for injury incidents rather than fatality incidents; (3) the lack of correlation between terrorist organizational size and performance; and (4) the differences in performance between terrorist organizations with a predominantly religious ideology and organizations with a predominantly political ideology.
About the Author: Dr. Toney has worked with the U.S. Department of Defense for more than 25 year's. He has supported organizational and process redesign efforts for the operations centers of several U.S. defense organizations such as the Defense Information Systems Agency, the U.S. Army, and the U.S. Marine Corps from locations across the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. During his tour in the Middle East, he researched the application of organizational behavior and leadership theories in the characterization and performance of terrorist organizations. After conducting an exploratory literature review, he learned how little was known about the organizational behavior, leadership, and performance of terrorist organizations, which prompted his initial research into the development of this book. Existing organizational behavior, leadership, and performance research focused primarily on traditional commercial and government organizations. Research on terrorist organizations tended to focus on the post-psychological effects of terrorist attacks in terms of human and property losses, and activities such as risk management and public health. He also learned the degree that national, organizational, and individual culture affects the behavior of these types of organizations. From this, he was able to construct a framework for understanding the performance of terrorist organizations by researching the relationship between organizational behavior and leadership theories, and national cultural dimensions, which is the objective of this book.