Applying organizational theory to accountability challenges in the U.S. intelligence community

U.S. intelligence community is always expected to perform its duties according to some specified guidelines. This study examines the three themes found in the Pfeffer and Salancik book, "The External Control of Organizations," as applied to the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). The paper reveals how the themes are applicable to the IC and their potential benefits to the IC. It is evident that the identified have proven to be useful to the community, as it has enabled it to adapt to the changing paradigms within the intelligence community.

The themes

First theme: the importance of the environment or the social context of organizations for understanding what decisions were made about issues ranging from whom to hire, the composition of boards of directors, and what alliances and mergers to seek.

From this theme, the leading obstacle in the realization of accountability in the U.S. intelligence community is the prerequisite of secrecy across agencies. Historically, the intelligence community has operated on based on the principle of "need-to-know." The need for secrecy restricts external oversight of the U.S. intelligence community. This confirms that tensions exist between effective control and secrecy. Undoubtedly, the intelligence community itself is interested in curbing external control. In fact, they have expressed an interest to advocate for increased and continued need for secrecy. This has become a culture of all the intelligence regimes. In most cases, it accounts for widespread dislikes among some intelligence professionals like William Colby. The intelligence community may be improved through limitation and the redefinition of the necessity for secrecy (Dobbin & Schoonhoven, 2010).

Because of the strict secrecy environments, internal controls have become vitally crucial in maintaining and improving the accountability within the U.S. intelligence community. The IC's organizational structure is highly hierarchical; an approach geared towards supporting the intelligence agencies. This gives the community too mush powers to make abuses, failures and diffuse accountability. The tall hierarchical environment distorts information that passes down and up, resists change and innovation (Pfister, 2009). Eventually, it leads to an increased gap between responsibility and authority while setting up a barrier to employee recruitment, retention, and involvement. The initial government solution to change internal control ended up adding managerial layers to oversee employees. Obviously, this thickening of the U.S. intelligence community has just worsened the problems.

The secrecy vitality has also worsened the cooperation and communication within the intelligence community. Researchers have suggested that a stovepipe system has resulted in an environment where information cannot flow freely and where sub-institutions are formed with their own organizational goals (Klein, 2010). Obviously, if the stovepipe system is dissolved, it will be embraced as a desirable improvement within the U.S. intelligence community.

An additional problem is the hierarchies and the secrecy environments have previously been manipulated to blur accountability. A good example is the Iran-Contra affair of this framework. Decisions made in secrecy under a blurred accountability environment are obviously poor decisions. This is particularly in the area of whom to hire, the composition of boards of directors, and what alliances and mergers to seek. This environment tends to increase the possibility of approval and eliminates the likely useful inputs of individuals not incorporated in the secret environment (Johnson, 2009).

Second Theme: although organizations were obviously constrained by their situations and environments, there were opportunities to do things such as co-opting sources of constraint, to obtain, at least temporarily more autonomy and the ability to pursue organizational interests.

The environment of secrecy within the Intelligence community fosters unusual organizational pathologies that tamper with the ability to pursue organizational interests. This leads to poor organizational performance. One problem is the tendency to depend on raw information when reporting to policy makers. Impressing policy makers using sophisticated data collection results in intelligence agencies seeking to present facts instead of empirical analysis. Secondly, analysts cannot know when to predict and forecast the presentations to policy makers (Stinchcombe, 2010). Lastly, the intelligence staff often shares unwarranted assumptions especially about the U.S. policy. The relevance of estimating intelligence is to minimize the policy options through clarifying the assumptions, issues, and consequences underlying various paths. The relevance of policymaking is to maintain options open for the longest period (Hatch, 2011). This can be achieved through by keeping secrets from agents of the intelligence community. This triggers them to increase resources to discover the values of policy makers.

Occasionally, the value of opinions given by intelligence professionals has been ignored because decision makers are aware that producers of intelligence did not have sufficient data. This leads to severe repercussions when it results in the discounting of CIA's advice against any invasion (Prakash, 2009).

The jigsaw theory focuses on the proclivity for building consensus and the partiality of producing current intelligence instead of presenting opposing views. The pathology arises from the psychology of analysts in this field. A strong unified voice would be logical even in the absence of strong convictions. A rejuvenated and a dynamic organizational structure will work to address these pathologies. Particularly, creating a multidisciplinary task force and introducing a peer evaluation system will eliminate the group think theory (Johnson, 2009). Similarly, it will restrict the utility of unprofessional techniques of intelligence. This will be achieved by forcing producers of intelligence to follow the industry standards, rather than standards of the intelligence consumers: they know little concerning intelligence work.

Such a constrained environment results in intelligence failures. Thus, it is with no doubt that most solutions and decisions must be open. Essentially, the field of intelligence requires reforms in terms of intellectual and institutionalized advocacy. Competitive analysis founded on projects, where two teams concentrate efforts on one project; do not demonstrate to be popular among intelligence professionals (Pfister, 2009). In addition, it is far from efficient. The intelligence agencies whose missions overlap each other must give a sufficient level of competitive evaluation. Institutionalized advocacy is impractical since the term itself is possibly oxymoronic. However, the concept may be tied to intellectual changes in intelligence analysis. This may happen only that analysis will be extremely uncompromising and independent (Hedlund & A-man, 2012).

Third Theme: the importance of the construct of power for understanding both intra-organizational and inter-organizational behavior

In all government entities, the control of an important and a successful intelligence community brings both inter-organizational and intra-organizational behavior advantage. In the intelligence industry, knowledge is equal to power. The military in collaboration with other intelligence agencies control the most political support and crucial resources. The military's intra-organizational and inter-organizational behavior goes further to the intelligence industry (Klein, 2010).

The tools for organizational behavior allow the intelligence community to understand how to influence the military agencies. The sheer size and strength of the intelligence community are mitigated by three elements. The internal division between military agencies (Klein, 2010) characterizes the first issue. Different services do not coordinate tightly and have failed to front a unified front on most issues in the intelligence community. Secondly, intelligence careerists see intelligence as something of a backwater. This means that intelligence professionals do not necessarily meet the highest degree of standards. It results in a negative impact on both intra-organizational and inter-organizational behavior within the intelligence community. In this context, the intelligence officers are portrayed as poor cousins. A re-designing of both intra-organizational and inter-organizational behavior within the intelligence community might eliminate this problem (Stinchcombe, 2010). The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) has special financial authority to procure technical intelligence capabilities. As the final element, the DCI's symbolic position links all agencies of the intelligence community. Regardless of any factor, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a claim to power arising from its role as the core agency in the intelligence community. These three variables demonstrate how DCI has attained the constrained influence over military intelligence.

The general trend of both intra-organizational and inter-organizational behavior in the intelligence community relates to constrained cooperation. Resources and information have not been adequately shared previously. The issue persists until today. For example, a recent report by the commerce department discovered that neither Defense nor the Commerce completely shared its information in the process of consultation (Dobbin & Schoonhoven, 2010). The intelligence community has evolved resulting in the DCI negotiating for support for his intelligence mission. To resolve the problem between the two entities even in the absence of formal authority, the current DCI has resorted to numerous committees to regulate the intelligence community. The issue with committees is that members are present primarily as representatives of their home agency (Hedlund & A-man, 2012).

In the end, instead of seeking creative solutions to problems, the community seeks to remain in the power to veto of their department regarding any decisions. This generates a drive for centralization within the intelligence community in order to speak in a unified voice in protection of the interests of the community. Such a unified voice aims to legitimize facts used to safeguard the interests of the community (Banner & Gagne?, 2006). With no doubt, biased legitimized facts tend to be unproductive in the coordination of a complex organ such as the intelligence community. The pathologies discuss fit perfectly with the institutional behavior model defined by Selznick.

Have these themes proven to be beneficial or detrimental to the IC?

The themes suggest that the prime factor is that the intelligence community is more of a creature than it is a creator of the environment. In the simplest form of the themes, the perspective provides validity of the conceptualization of the community as involved in a constant discretion and struggle for autonomy, confronted with external control and strains. The themes view the intelligence community as a coalition of markets, whereby both control and influence are transacted. Here, actors are required to negotiate for their relationships with numerous external constituents (Banner & Gagne?, 2006).

The three themes emphasize that the intelligence community depends on the environment for inputs in order to survive. Most of the work of the top intelligence officers is to respond to and understand the demands of key external constituents whose support is crucial to the survival of the community. This means the Intelligence Community must overcome two major obstacles:

I. In the IC's understanding of its environment tends to be imperfect or distorted. This is because the organization acts on the information they collect and are able to interpret.

II. The IC confronts multiple constituents with consistent demands (Stinchcombe, 2010).

The intelligence community complies where it has to although it has to devise ways to increase its autonomy. It does this through making its environment more favorable and predictable. Sometimes, collaboration with other intelligence agencies ensures that it gains more market supremacy from coalitions such as joint ventures and alliances. This enables them to obtain much greater control, influence and enlist government aid by seeking tax breaks, subsidies, and protective tariffs. On the other hand, there seems to be a dilemma: each entanglement, even in garnering great influence over the environment, likewise generates erosion of the IC's autonomy (Prakash, 2009).

The themes describe the roles of intelligence officers as symbolic and political. Responsive roles ensure that officers adjust the intelligence community's activities to be consistent with the pressures from the environment. A discretionary role exists where the officers seek to alter the relationship between the community and its environment. Finally, the themes front a symbolic role where the officers make a difference (Pfeffer & Salancik, 2013).

What types of changes do you see coming in the future of the IC and how can the IC poise itself to best adapt/respond to these changes?

The most important finding is that a dramatic overhaul of the intelligence community's organizational structures is not desirable. Therefore, this suggests that many areas within the intelligence community are set to change.

The problems of hierarchy have been framed as the increasing differences or accountability and responsibility. As earlier noted, the imposition of a full matrix structure in the intelligence community will be deleterious and highly impossible. However, efforts of the U.S. multidisciplinary unit ought to be expanded and encouraged in order to achieve the desired dynamism in the post war period (Donaldson, 2010). The intelligence community always seeks for opportunities to further its cause and capability. In fact, this need is portrayed in the legislation passed during the launch of the new Augmentation Project. This program will erect an intelligence reserve unit composed of experts from academia and other sectors of national security. In many cases, they may be called to offer specialized information in cases of crisis. This is referred to as marketizing the intelligence process to fit comfortably with the trending concepts in organizational theory (Dobbin & Schoonhoven, 2010).

It will be desirable to integrate the intelligence community further both from the perspective of effective surge capability and improved control. Few individuals have arguably proposed that standardization of training, personnel practices, and security protocols will allow the intelligence community to access the whole expertise within the community in times of a crisis. Experts have further advocated for the utility of rotational assignments (Pfeffer & Salancik, 2013). This is understood as the manipulation of the formal intelligence community organization seeking to knit it together. Additional suggestions to foster a community spirit may include service activities or community wide social activities. The community will be drawn together through increasing social contacts (Hedlund & A-man, 2012).

Adopting the conservation position on the reforms within the intelligence community remains the most prudent position. To a great degree, the individual agencies have developed the capacity for self-evaluation. For example, a recent strategy introduced in the intelligence community acknowledges the need for intense outreach to business and academic experts. It also, recognizes the need for a great emphasis on flexibility, multidisciplinary and informal teams, and increased cooperation between the intelligence community and the CIA (Hedlund & A-man, 2012). Evidently, these precepts reflect all the recommendations made in this study. Since the intelligence, agencies must strive hard to improve their operations and service delivery, advocates for reforms must not cease from monitoring their activities (Dobbin & Schoonhoven, 2010).

Conclusion

Collaboration with other global intelligence communities is another aspect that may be adopted as a way of improving the service delivery from the U.S. IC. This will be helpful in the gathering of useful information, which can boost U.S. security situation to the expected standard. The partnership with top-notch global communities will also help in reducing cost incurred when intelligence is collected from a friendly nation (Pfeffer & Salancik, 2013). The adoption of current and up-to-date IT gadgets is not an option. This must be a usual practice within the community if they have to be ahead of the 'enemy'. The government must also increase its funding to the community in order to ensure that the projects within the community are implemented without any glitches. In fact, this will guarantee the citizens that their taxes are used in projects geared towards improving their security (Prakash, 2009).