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A Glance at Terrorist Organizations from the Perspective of Organizational Theories

Year 2013, Volume: 14 Issue: 2, 1 - 18, 04.09.2013

Sefer Yılmaz

Abstract

The problem of conceptualizing terrorist organization is still a controversial issue, even though it has been taken place in the literature heavily. In this essay, terrorist organizations will be approached in the context of organizational theories. Terrorist organizations will be introduced as exceptional structures besides being consistent with most of the organizational theories, departing from them in terms of strategies they adapt and life expectancy they experience. According to some theories such as institutional theory, population ecology approach and system theories, although being claimed to be excluded from the system by other organizations for they do not resemble and even threaten the existence of others and although being wanted to be eliminated by the system, terrorist organizations can be able to survive more than these theories contend.

Keywords

Terror Terrorist Organizations Organizational Theories.

References

  • ALBRECHT, Karl (1983), “New systems view of the organization”, in: Englewood Cliffs (ed.), Organization Development, pp. 44-59, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
  • BAKKE, Wight E. (1959), “Concept of social organization” in: Haire, M. (ed), Modern Organization Theory, pp. 16-75, New York, NY: John Wiley. BOYLE, Joseph M., Jr. (2003), “Just War Doctrine and the Military Response to Terrorism”, Journal of Political Philosophy, 11, 2:153–170.
  • BRANNAN, D. W., P. F. ESLERM and Anders STRINDBERG, (2001), “Talking to terrorists: Towards an independent analytic framework for the study of violent substate activism”, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 24; 3-24. BURNS, Tom. G., and George Macpherson STALKER (1961), The Management of Innovation, London: Tavistock Institute.
  • CALLAWAY, Rhonda and Julie HARRELSON-STEPHENS (2006), “Toward a Theory of Terrorism: Human Security as a Determinant of Terrorism”, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 29(7); 679-702
  • CAPRA, Fritjof (1997), The Web of Life-A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, NY: Anchor.
  • CAROTHERS, Thomas (2003), “Democracy: Terrorism’s Uncertain Antidote”, Current History, 102 (668); 403-406
  • CARROLL, Glenn. R. and Michael. T. HANNAN (2000), The Demography of Corporations and Industries, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. COLLIER, P. and A. HOEFFLER (2001), Greed and Grievance in Civil War, Washington DC: World Bank, Unpublished manuscript.
  • COOPER, H. A. (2001), “The problem of definition revisited”, American Behavioral Scientist, 44; 881–893.
  • CRENSHAW, Martha (1990), ‘The Causes of Terrorism’, in Charles W. Kegley, Jr. (ed.) International Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls, NY, London: St Martin’s Press, pp. 113-126.
  • CRENSHAW, Martha (2003), “The Causes of Terrorism,” in Charles W. Kegley, Jr. (ed.), The New Global Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, pp. 92-105.
  • DEUTSCH, K. W. (1953), Nationalism and Social Communication, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • ECKSTEIN, Harry and T. R. GURR (1975), Patterns of Authority: A Structural Basis for Political Inquiry, NY: Wiley.
  • ENDERS, Walter and Todd SANDLER (2000), “Is transnational terrorism becoming more threatening”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 44; 3073
  • ENDERS, Walter and Todd SANDLER (2002), “Patterns of transnational terrorism, 1970-1999: Alternative time series estimates”, International Studies Quarterly 46; 145-165.
  • ENGENE, Jan Oskar (1998), Patterns of Terrorism in Western Europe, 1950-95, PhD. Diss., University of Bergen.
  • FAYOL, Henry (1949), General and Industrial Management, translated by Constance Storrs, London: Pitman.
  • FEARON, J. D. and D. LAITIN (2003), “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War”, American Political Science Review, 97 (1); 75-90.
  • FERRACUTI, Franco (1982), “A Sociopsychiatric Interpretation ofTerrorism”, Annals of American Academy of Political & Social Science, 463; 1291
  • FORSYTHE, D. P. (1993), Human Rights and Peace: International and National Dimensions, Lincoln, Nebraska: Univ. of Nebraska Press.
  • FREY, Bruno S. (2004), Dealing with terrorism – Stick or carrot? Edward Elgar: Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA.
  • GELLNER, Ernest (1964), ‘Nationalism and Modernization’, in Hutchinson, John, and Anthony D. Smith (eds), Nationalism, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, pp. 55-63.
  • GELLNER, Ernest (1983), Nations and nationalism, Oxford: Blackwell.
  • GIDDENS, Anthony (1990), The consequences of modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • GISSINGER, Robert and Neils P. GLEDITSCH (1999), “Globalization and Conflict: Welfare, Distribution, and Political Unrest”, Journal of WorldSystems Research, 5 (2); 274-300.
  • GOLEMBIEWSKI, R. T. (1965), Men, management and morality, New York: McGraw-Hill.
  • HANNAN, M. T. and J. FREEMAN (1977), “The population ecology of organizations.” American Journal of Sociology, 82 (5): 929-964.
  • HANNAN, Michael T., Laszlo POLOS and R. Carroll GLENN (2007), Logics of Organization Theory: Audiences, Code, and Ecologies, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • HELLRIEGEL, Don and John W. SLOCUM (1973), Organization theory: A contingency approach, Business Horizons.
  • HOFFMANN, Bruce (1998), Inside terrorism, New York: Columbia University Press.
  • HOROWITZ, D. L. (1985), Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
  • HUCZYNSKI, Andrzeg A. and David A. BUCHANAN (2007), Organizational Behavior, 6th Edition, Pearson Education.
  • HUDSON, R. A. (1999), The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why? Washington: Library of Congress, Federal Research Division.
  • HUNTINGTON, Samuel P. (1968), Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Univ. Press.
  • LAQUER, Walter (1999), The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction, New York: Oxford University Press.
  • KELLY, Susanne and Mary Ann ALLISON (1999), The Complexity Advantage: How the Science of Complexity Can Help Your Business Achieve Peak Performance, McGraw-Hill, New York.
  • LANDES, William M. (1978), “An economic study of U.S. aircraft hijackings 1961–1976”, Journal of Law and Economics, 21(1); 1–31.
  • LAQUEUR, Walter (1987), The Age of Terrorism, Boston: Little Brown.
  • LAWRENCE, P. R., and J. W. LORSCH (1967), “Differentiation and integration in complex organizations”, Administrative Science Quarterly, 12(1); 1
  • LIPSET, Seymour Martin (1963), Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
  • MCELWEE, M. (1998), “Chaos Theory and Complexity as Fountainheads for Design of an Organization Theory Building Workshop”, Paper read at XIVth World Congress of the International Sociological Association, Montreal, Canada, July.
  • MERARI, Ariel and Nehemia FRIEDLAND (1985), “Social psychological aspects of political terrorism”, Applied Social Psychology Annual, 6; 185-205. MORRIS, M. H. and P. S. LEWIS (1995), “The determinants of entrepreneurial activity. Implications for marketing”, European Journal of Marketing, 29(7); 31-48.
  • OLSON, Mancur (1998), The Logic of Collective Action, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • OOTS, Kent L. (1986), The Political Organization Approach to Transnational Terrorism, NY: Greenwood Press.
  • SENGE, Peter (1990), The Fifth Discipline, The art and practice of the learning organization, New York: Doubleday.
  • POWELL, Walter W. and Paul J. DIMAGGIO (1991), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
  • ROETHLISBERGER, F. J., and J. William DICKSON (1943), Management and the Worker, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • ROKKAN, Stein and Derek W. URWIN (1982), The Politics of Territorial Identity: Studies in European Regionalism, NY: Sage.
  • RUMMEL, Rudolph J. (1995), “Democracy, Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 39 (1); 3-26.
  • SAGEMAN, Marc (2004), Understanding Terror Networks, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
  • SANDLER, Todd, John TSCHIRHART and Jon CAULEY (1983), “A theoretical analysis of transnational terrorism”, American Political Science Review, 77; 36-54.
  • SAUTER, M. A. and J. J. CARAFANO (2005), Homeland Security: A Complete Guide to Understanding, Preventing, and Surviving Terrorism, New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
  • SCOTT, W. Richard (2004), “Institutional theory”, in Encyclopedia of Social Theory, George Ritzer, ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  • SMITH, Brent L. and K. D. MORGAN (1994), “Terrorist right and left: Empirical issues in profiling American terrorists”, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 17; 39–57.
  • STERN, Jessica. (2003), Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill, New York: HarperCollins.
  • STOUT, Russel (1981), “Formal Theory and the flexible organization”, Advancement Management Journal, Winter 1981; 44-52.
  • TAYLOR, Frederick Winslow (1947), Principles of Scientific Management, New York, NY: Harper.
  • WALDO, Dwight (1984), The administrative state, 2nd ed., New York: Holmes & Meier.
  • WEBER, Max (1947), The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, Translated by Talcott Parsons, New York, NY: Free Press
  • WILKINSON, Paul and Alasdair M. STEWART (eds.) (1987), Contemporary Research on Terrorism, Aberdeen, UK: University of Aberdeen Press. WOODWARD, Joan (1965), Industrial Organization, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • ZAKARIA, Fareed (2003), The future of freedom: Illiberal democracy at home and abroad, New York & London: Norton.

A Glance at Terrorist Organizations from the Perspective of Organizational Theories

Year 2013, Volume: 14 Issue: 2, 1 - 18, 04.09.2013

Sefer Yılmaz

Abstract

The problem of conceptualizing terrorist organization is still a controversial issue, even though it has been taken place in the literature heavily. In this essay, terrorist organizations will be approached in the context of organizational theories. Terrorist organizations will be introduced as exceptional structures besides being consistent with most of the organizational theories, departing from them in terms of strategies they adapt and life expectancy they experience. According to some theories such as institutional theory, population ecology approach and system theories, although being claimed to be excluded from the system by other organizations for they do not resemble and even threaten the existence of others and although being wanted to be eliminated by the system, terrorist organizations can be able to survive more than these theories contend.

Key Words: terror, terrorist organizations, organizational theories.

Keywords

Terör Terör Örgütleri Örgüt Teorileri.

References

  • ALBRECHT, Karl (1983), “New systems view of the organization”, in: Englewood Cliffs (ed.), Organization Development, pp. 44-59, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
  • BAKKE, Wight E. (1959), “Concept of social organization” in: Haire, M. (ed), Modern Organization Theory, pp. 16-75, New York, NY: John Wiley. BOYLE, Joseph M., Jr. (2003), “Just War Doctrine and the Military Response to Terrorism”, Journal of Political Philosophy, 11, 2:153–170.
  • BRANNAN, D. W., P. F. ESLERM and Anders STRINDBERG, (2001), “Talking to terrorists: Towards an independent analytic framework for the study of violent substate activism”, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 24; 3-24. BURNS, Tom. G., and George Macpherson STALKER (1961), The Management of Innovation, London: Tavistock Institute.
  • CALLAWAY, Rhonda and Julie HARRELSON-STEPHENS (2006), “Toward a Theory of Terrorism: Human Security as a Determinant of Terrorism”, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 29(7); 679-702
  • CAPRA, Fritjof (1997), The Web of Life-A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, NY: Anchor.
  • CAROTHERS, Thomas (2003), “Democracy: Terrorism’s Uncertain Antidote”, Current History, 102 (668); 403-406
  • CARROLL, Glenn. R. and Michael. T. HANNAN (2000), The Demography of Corporations and Industries, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. COLLIER, P. and A. HOEFFLER (2001), Greed and Grievance in Civil War, Washington DC: World Bank, Unpublished manuscript.
  • COOPER, H. A. (2001), “The problem of definition revisited”, American Behavioral Scientist, 44; 881–893.
  • CRENSHAW, Martha (1990), ‘The Causes of Terrorism’, in Charles W. Kegley, Jr. (ed.) International Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls, NY, London: St Martin’s Press, pp. 113-126.
  • CRENSHAW, Martha (2003), “The Causes of Terrorism,” in Charles W. Kegley, Jr. (ed.), The New Global Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, pp. 92-105.
  • DEUTSCH, K. W. (1953), Nationalism and Social Communication, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • ECKSTEIN, Harry and T. R. GURR (1975), Patterns of Authority: A Structural Basis for Political Inquiry, NY: Wiley.
  • ENDERS, Walter and Todd SANDLER (2000), “Is transnational terrorism becoming more threatening”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 44; 3073
  • ENDERS, Walter and Todd SANDLER (2002), “Patterns of transnational terrorism, 1970-1999: Alternative time series estimates”, International Studies Quarterly 46; 145-165.
  • ENGENE, Jan Oskar (1998), Patterns of Terrorism in Western Europe, 1950-95, PhD. Diss., University of Bergen.
  • FAYOL, Henry (1949), General and Industrial Management, translated by Constance Storrs, London: Pitman.
  • FEARON, J. D. and D. LAITIN (2003), “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War”, American Political Science Review, 97 (1); 75-90.
  • FERRACUTI, Franco (1982), “A Sociopsychiatric Interpretation ofTerrorism”, Annals of American Academy of Political & Social Science, 463; 1291
  • FORSYTHE, D. P. (1993), Human Rights and Peace: International and National Dimensions, Lincoln, Nebraska: Univ. of Nebraska Press.
  • FREY, Bruno S. (2004), Dealing with terrorism – Stick or carrot? Edward Elgar: Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA.
  • GELLNER, Ernest (1964), ‘Nationalism and Modernization’, in Hutchinson, John, and Anthony D. Smith (eds), Nationalism, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, pp. 55-63.
  • GELLNER, Ernest (1983), Nations and nationalism, Oxford: Blackwell.
  • GIDDENS, Anthony (1990), The consequences of modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • GISSINGER, Robert and Neils P. GLEDITSCH (1999), “Globalization and Conflict: Welfare, Distribution, and Political Unrest”, Journal of WorldSystems Research, 5 (2); 274-300.
  • GOLEMBIEWSKI, R. T. (1965), Men, management and morality, New York: McGraw-Hill.
  • HANNAN, M. T. and J. FREEMAN (1977), “The population ecology of organizations.” American Journal of Sociology, 82 (5): 929-964.
  • HANNAN, Michael T., Laszlo POLOS and R. Carroll GLENN (2007), Logics of Organization Theory: Audiences, Code, and Ecologies, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • HELLRIEGEL, Don and John W. SLOCUM (1973), Organization theory: A contingency approach, Business Horizons.
  • HOFFMANN, Bruce (1998), Inside terrorism, New York: Columbia University Press.
  • HOROWITZ, D. L. (1985), Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
  • HUCZYNSKI, Andrzeg A. and David A. BUCHANAN (2007), Organizational Behavior, 6th Edition, Pearson Education.
  • HUDSON, R. A. (1999), The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why? Washington: Library of Congress, Federal Research Division.
  • HUNTINGTON, Samuel P. (1968), Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Univ. Press.
  • LAQUER, Walter (1999), The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction, New York: Oxford University Press.
  • KELLY, Susanne and Mary Ann ALLISON (1999), The Complexity Advantage: How the Science of Complexity Can Help Your Business Achieve Peak Performance, McGraw-Hill, New York.
  • LANDES, William M. (1978), “An economic study of U.S. aircraft hijackings 1961–1976”, Journal of Law and Economics, 21(1); 1–31.
  • LAQUEUR, Walter (1987), The Age of Terrorism, Boston: Little Brown.
  • LAWRENCE, P. R., and J. W. LORSCH (1967), “Differentiation and integration in complex organizations”, Administrative Science Quarterly, 12(1); 1
  • LIPSET, Seymour Martin (1963), Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
  • MCELWEE, M. (1998), “Chaos Theory and Complexity as Fountainheads for Design of an Organization Theory Building Workshop”, Paper read at XIVth World Congress of the International Sociological Association, Montreal, Canada, July.
  • MERARI, Ariel and Nehemia FRIEDLAND (1985), “Social psychological aspects of political terrorism”, Applied Social Psychology Annual, 6; 185-205. MORRIS, M. H. and P. S. LEWIS (1995), “The determinants of entrepreneurial activity. Implications for marketing”, European Journal of Marketing, 29(7); 31-48.
  • OLSON, Mancur (1998), The Logic of Collective Action, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • OOTS, Kent L. (1986), The Political Organization Approach to Transnational Terrorism, NY: Greenwood Press.
  • SENGE, Peter (1990), The Fifth Discipline, The art and practice of the learning organization, New York: Doubleday.
  • POWELL, Walter W. and Paul J. DIMAGGIO (1991), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
  • ROETHLISBERGER, F. J., and J. William DICKSON (1943), Management and the Worker, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • ROKKAN, Stein and Derek W. URWIN (1982), The Politics of Territorial Identity: Studies in European Regionalism, NY: Sage.
  • RUMMEL, Rudolph J. (1995), “Democracy, Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 39 (1); 3-26.
  • SAGEMAN, Marc (2004), Understanding Terror Networks, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
  • SANDLER, Todd, John TSCHIRHART and Jon CAULEY (1983), “A theoretical analysis of transnational terrorism”, American Political Science Review, 77; 36-54.
  • SAUTER, M. A. and J. J. CARAFANO (2005), Homeland Security: A Complete Guide to Understanding, Preventing, and Surviving Terrorism, New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
  • SCOTT, W. Richard (2004), “Institutional theory”, in Encyclopedia of Social Theory, George Ritzer, ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  • SMITH, Brent L. and K. D. MORGAN (1994), “Terrorist right and left: Empirical issues in profiling American terrorists”, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 17; 39–57.
  • STERN, Jessica. (2003), Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill, New York: HarperCollins.
  • STOUT, Russel (1981), “Formal Theory and the flexible organization”, Advancement Management Journal, Winter 1981; 44-52.
  • TAYLOR, Frederick Winslow (1947), Principles of Scientific Management, New York, NY: Harper.
  • WALDO, Dwight (1984), The administrative state, 2nd ed., New York: Holmes & Meier.
  • WEBER, Max (1947), The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, Translated by Talcott Parsons, New York, NY: Free Press
  • WILKINSON, Paul and Alasdair M. STEWART (eds.) (1987), Contemporary Research on Terrorism, Aberdeen, UK: University of Aberdeen Press. WOODWARD, Joan (1965), Industrial Organization, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • ZAKARIA, Fareed (2003), The future of freedom: Illiberal democracy at home and abroad, New York & London: Norton.
There are 60 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Subjects Business Administration
Journal Section Makaleler
Authors

Sefer Yılmaz

Publication Date September 4, 2013
Submission Date September 4, 2013
Published in Issue Year 2013Volume: 14 Issue: 2

Cite

APA Yılmaz, S. (2013). A Glance at Terrorist Organizations from the Perspective of Organizational Theories. Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi İktisadi Ve İdari Bilimler Dergisi, 14(2), 1-18.
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