Organizational failure and intelligence: A framework for understanding intelligence failure

Abstract: Failure often captures public attention, especially in an intelligence context were the consequences can be devastating and the successes are rarely visible. Understanding failure is important if we are to prevent it and both the field of organizational theory and the field of intelligence have been interested in the nature of failure. This study aimed to further the understanding of intelligence failure by applying a framework for organizational failure created by McMillan and Overall (2017) to the case of the Yom Kippur War. Utilizing case study methodology and process-tracing, combined with an operationalization of the McMillan and Overall framework, this paper aimed at evaluating the exploratory and explanatory value of the framework in an intelligence context. The framework consists of three strategic organizational capacities (learning, planning, and agility) and their three corresponding levels of failure (simple, complex, and catastrophic). Misalignments in each organizational capacity accumulate and cause increasingly serious states of failure. The framework showed promise for the academic study of intelligence failure as it allows for comprehensive analysis of causal and sequential events, but its current form is deemed impractical for use by intelligence personnel.