Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
897492 Technological Forecasting and Social Change 2007 28 Pages PDF
Abstract

Drawing upon organizational design, contingency, and field theory, we outline a conceptual model for studying terrorism at the field level and argue that existing computational organizational theory could be extended to enable such inquiry. We introduce the terrorism field as the system of dynamic interaction between the terrorism, counterterrorism and political governance industries, defining the overarching functions of each. We then argue that intertheoretic, field-level inquiry could lead to explicit conceptual and computational models with significant benefits for researchers and policy makers, to include enhancing understanding of the proximate environmental conditions that are deleterious to the use of terrorism by political challengers. Using POW-ER, an illustrative field-level case of a basic terrorist attack is then modeled based on two archetypes of terrorist organizational forms emerging from the new terrorism debate: 1) hierarchy and 2) network, and two treatments: 1) applying counterterrorism techniques and 2) reducing knowledge within the terrorist organization. Preliminary findings compared to the baseline case are discussed, as well as implications for future research.

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