Dissertation
Intelligence for a complex environment: transforming traditional intelligence with insights from complexity science and field research on NATO
How can complexity science advance intelligence transformation?
- Author
- B.E.P. Spoor
- Date
- 15 January 2025
- Links
- Full text in Scholarly Publications Leiden University
This study asserts that complexity science, the study of systems that are complex and adaptive, holds many promises for examining the threats in the operational environment as well as intelligence organisations themselves. While this may seem a logical deduction, the study of intelligence has yet to adopt the ideas and methods of complexity science. Therefore this study aims to seek insights from complexity science and to apply these to intelligence. In doing so it strives for a theoretical and also an empirical contribution to the study of intelligence. The latter is formed by case study research into how NATO’s Multinational Corps Northeast (MNC NE) organises its intelligence.
The research shows that complexity science offers alternative insights, tested in broader military sciences and other related fields, to improve intelligence performance. With complexity, a new intelligence paradigm is formulated, and contrasted to the traditional intelligence paradigm. To apply this, three design properties (requisite variety, sensemaking, and organisational learning) show how concepts from complexity can help to move from the traditional to the new, complex intelligence paradigm.