Constant Shortfalls of Department Egos – The Professionalism of How Interdepartmental Pride Gets in the Way of the Ultimate Mission/Goal by Lack of Communication
Introduction
In modern-day organizations, departments can no longer work alone because the global need for internal communication has risen with the aim of sustaining competition. There has also been an increase in the need for interdepartmental communication. It is therefore important to understand how issues such as interdepartmental pride affect communication in the organization because achieving organizational goals relies on communication, thus creating a connection between the failure to achieve organizational goals and interdepartmental pride. This will help in enlightening employees in various departments about the damage they cause to the organization by supporting interdepartmental pride, thus encouraging the breaking of such traditions. The purpose of this review is to show evidence upon why the departments in the Intelligence Community (IC) are failing by not effectively communicating with each other on missions, policy reforms, nor true intent when offering intelligence to different departments. In doing so, the review will demonstrate why the evidence facing each historical failed event was a catastrophic failure within the IC, due to limited to almost no cooperation nor communication between the departments. I will also show evidence in depth, explaining why the National Security Council (NSC), along with the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), must come to a common ground when policy reform is at hand. The Intelligence Community could run more smoothly with a few key factors, which include proper leadership, trusting protocol, and communication. Furthermore, this will explain why they are only sharing their resources with other departments when they are expected to receive recognition or project incentives, which proves that in situational details, things can be done in a timely fashion when presented to the public and to Congress. The goal of this paper is to recognize that the Intelligence Community is not working together in a timely manner to improve performance and how using other types of collection intelligence (preferably OSINT or Open-Source Intelligence) could be better so that the response to catastrophic events can be prevented with teamwork.
Literature Review
Theory of Cooperation and Competition
In every organization, employees engage in cooperation ad competition. The limit between competition and collaboration is mainly achieved through effective communication. Effective communication includes expressing ideas in words whereby members of a group pay attention to each other and accept their ideas, and are affected by them. Such groups tend to experience less issues understanding and communicating with others (Heikkurinen, 2019). Members of every group express fewer obstructiveness, helpfulness and friendliness in their conversations. Dennis (2011) argues that they also tend to be normally more satisfied with groups and solutions and being impressed by what other members of the group contribute. Cooperative teams exhibit division of labor, coordination of effort, orderliness in discussions, the orientation of accomplishment of tasks and high productivity. According to Harter (2012), cooperative groups also demonstrate a sense of agreement with the ideas offered by others and a feeling of general similarity in values and beliefs and the confidence in individual ideas and the value that other people in the group ascribe to the ideas are embraced. There is also a willingness to enhance the power of others to achieve their goals as the capabilities of others in an area unit are strong in every cooperative relationship. Conflicting interests are additionally shaped as a mutual limitation to be addressed by a cooperative effort to facilitate the recognition of the legitimacy of the interests of others and hence the necessity to seek answers that suit everyone’s interest. This contributes to limiting the scope of contradictory interests and keeping efforts to influence one another to decent types of influence.
Impact of Communication on Motivation
In the traditional organization context, managers spend most of their time communicating either through face to face communication, meetings, emails, letters, memos and reports. However, in modern-day organizations, communication has become an indispensable part of managerial work(Adaeze & Nnenna, 2013). An operational management of practices in an organization requires more cooperation and teamwork among employees in various practical groups. Therefore, managing current employee performance and motivating them for better performance creates a need for efficient communication practices. According to Harris & Nelson (2008), communication in recent days is among the most important and dominant undertakings in organizations. Relationships essentially arise from communication, and the survival and functioning of organizations rely on operational associations among groups and individuals. Organizational competencies are additionally established and enforced through strong communicative and social processes. It is important to acknowledge that every managerial activity and function incorporates some form of indirect or direct communication. Whether organizing and planning or leading and directing, managers find themselves communicating through or with others. Organizational policies and managerial decisions are ineffective unless they are understood by the people responsible for implementing them. Ineffective communication can affect the performance of an organization resulting in a drop in share price. Kinicki & Kreitner (2006) argue that effective communication is crucial for the motivation of employees and job satisfaction. The main goal of interdepartmental communication in an organization is mainly about the connection of people in the organization for better outcomes. Effective communication is, therefore, the foundation of an organization’s success because it strengthens the vision of an organization and connects employees to the organization, facilitates change and influences business results.
Interdepartmental Communication and Information Sharing
Communication is a broad concept, and internal communication is considered to be a subcategory of communication that views how individuals exchange information in an organization. It observes the attributes of successful communication strategies within organizations (Thorson, 2013). Internal communication also involves a process of integrating different roles to embrace and develop all relationships between organizations, employees and individuals collectively to allow employees to recognize the functions and roles that are required of them (Smith & Mounter, 2008). Modern day organizations are divided into different departments that are supposed to work together to achieve organizational goals. This has created a need for effective interdepartmental communication to develop and promote productive relationships. The breakdowns in interdepartmental communication can have a serious impact on an organization’s efficiency and increase stress levels among employees hence causing poor performance (Mautino & Lorenzen, 2013). In organizations with poor interdepartmental communication, expectations and guidelines around internal communication are not defined, and employees are left to find their own ways of passing information to other departments. In such organizations, rules relating to internal stakeholder communication are usually ambiguous and can be interpreted in any way hence causing conflicts in the organization. Welch (2012) argues that internal communication dictates the effectiveness of an organization because it contributes to positive internal associations by facilitating communication between employees and senior managers. Effective internal communication also creates transparency in communication, including sustainability of information, employee participation and accountability hence creating employee trust, commitment, mutual control and satisfaction. Effective interdepartmental communication also helps in defining expectations and bringing clarity to leaders and employees, alongside creating alignment across all the departments encouraging people to take collective and individual responsibility for various processes (Bordeianu & Lubas, 2013). Internal communication additionally promotes help in areas such as encouraging people to work in teams, supporting the decision-making process and eliminating the obstacles between the departments in an organization
Interdepartmental communication focuses on the long-term scope and direction of an organization. It also focuses on how the organization places itself with respect to the environment and its stakeholders. Interdepartmental communication is also concerned with the development of a competitive advantage that is preferably sustainable in the long run by considering all long-term viewpoints (Bordeianu & Lubas, 2013). It is additionally closely associated with the long term scope and direction of an organization. According to Bansal & Song (2017), the organization should match its resources to the evolving business environment, especially the changes in the regulatory and market environment and the expectations of stakeholders. The idea of interdepartmental communication is based on concepts such as the facets of communication, communication medium, control of information, analysis of training problem, political and competitive environment (Kovalenko et al., 2009). The sharing of information is one of the most effective and easiest management for employee participation in an organization. Good information on the objectives of an organization, events, activities and services can contribute to revealing an employee’s features. Internal communication in organizations focuses on creating a unified corporate identity and comprehending an organization’s philosophy. Some leaders consider that the motivation and involvement of staff is the only approach to guarantee the satisfaction of customers, and an organization ought to guarantee that its employees are motivated to maintain communication at all organizational levels. Sharing information can play a significant role in increasing satisfaction and promotion and improve collective and individual work (Lau, 2007). The value of intrinsic motivation is therefore based on the notion of enriching the model of work to guarantee that the effect extends to the lower organizational levels so that there is decentralized clarification. The sharing of information also consists of a power aspect, including suggestions for improving the organization by creating one voice. It also incorporates breaking down information, mastery and extension of content to guarantee that employees have access to skills development, rewards and information for using their influence to make a vital contribution to an organization’s goals.
According to Cooper & Schindler (2006), effective communication contributes to job satisfaction and employee motivation. Organizations can use the communication programs established for employees to attain their goals if they are properly managed. One of the issues affecting organizations is the relevance and consistency of communications both in and outside the organization. Managing communication and properly implementing an effective communication strategy may inspire employees to be productive because they will have the view or perception that the organization treats them as individuals belonging to a group and not isolated. The loyalty and attitudes of employees are directly influenced by their involvement in communication efforts, and this has a direct impact on how they attend to clients and customers, which in turn results in organizational growth. This demonstrates the significance of communication in the daily operations of an organization. For example, in managing change, the more employees engage in communication and the strategy adopted for change, the higher the trust level and commitment between employees and the organization and a more positive relationship between internal publics and the organization.
Interdepartmental collaboration
Interdepartmental collaboration refers to any joint action across different departments in an organization with the intention of increasing public value and addressing difficult public issues through partnering, coordination, cooperation and conflict resolution. Interdepartmental collaboration has become a vital activity for organizations to coordinate efforts that contribute to success (Bordeianu & Lubas, 2013). This type of collaboration is used to encourage other related departments to cooperate in joint activities to increase value and contribute to the improvement of governance. The attributes of interdepartmental collaboration can either be in two or three party interactions between various department levels in an organization. Collaboration is vital in solving organizational problems that cannot be solved through a traditional approach. In conventional organizations, interdepartmental collaboration was viewed as a coincidental or informal activity, and in some organizations, it was used as a managerial experiment. In modern-day organizations, collaboration has been accepted and developed as a common concept. For instance, in the United States, the collaboration between departments has become a foundation of public management. Internal communication systems among various departmental functions allow the organizations to achieve various goals in an organization. Organizations that lack proper and effective communication strategies will collapse if there is a lack of proper guidelines and directions to be followed. Groups and individuals in an organization are connected with one another through communication hence the need for a well laid out communication strategy. An appropriate organizational structure can also be determined through effective and proper communication systems. Effective communication and collaboration between departments also fosters mutual corporeality among employees and helps in breaking down important information about the objectives and goals of an organization, and allows organizations to deliver common organizational values.
Analysis and Findings
Effective communication is one of the factors contributing to the functionality of the Intelligence Community. Miscommunication and failure to pass information at the right time, therefore, affects the ability of the agency to meet its goals. A report provided by Maguire (2008) demonstrates that there are communication issues in the Intelligence Community resulting in failure to share information. The report states that the WMD commission report found that the Intelligence Community has no shortcomings rather than in sharing information. The Intelligence Community is currently having serious information sharing issues due to a lack of cooperation among members. The report by Maguire (2008) states that inadequate sharing of information is a major inhibitor of the effective performance of the agency. The Intelligent Community is required to ensure that there is maximum availability and access to information relating to intelligence to enable the DNI to establish policies and procedures to resolve conflicts between the need to protect intelligence methods and sources and the need to share intelligence information. The report also states that IG inspections, reviews and audits across the Intelligence Community show that the ODNI has not fully implemented the procedures and policies required to achieve the information sharing level that has been considered by EO 1233 and IRTPA. The author also identified specific communication issues in the IC that are hindering the effective completion of goals. One of them is that most analysts depend on personal relationships with colleagues to gather most of the intelligence data they need particularly if the data is being sourced from programs that are compartmented. The second issue is that agencies in charge of developing collecting systems still control and limit access to products and data essential for analysts across the Intelligence Community. The third issue is that analysts have no chance to adjudicate or review when they are not granted access to information.
Based on the issues identified above, Maguire (2008) recommends using Director for National Intelligence oversight and leadership to resolve the issue of information sharing. There are, however, some issues that may hinder this recommendation from working. One of them is that the information technology systems used in the Intelligence Community are highly incompatible and disconnected. The second issue is that the Intelligence Community continues operating on many networks that do not have interoperability. The third issue is that the Intelligence Community does not have ordinary architecture supporting the retrieval and storage of sensitive intelligence. The fourth issue is that intelligence reports and information are frequently not being broken down on time. Information technology systems in the Intelligence Community are also vulnerable to attacks. The failure to share information also arises from a lack of collaboration and integration. The report by Maguire (2008) states that the elements of the Intelligence Community do not effectively and consistently collaborate and integrate the efforts of their programs, talents and resources hence limiting the ability of the Intelligence Community to develop capabilities in collecting intelligence and deliver reliable intelligence to customers. The report also states that poor collaboration in ODNI is the main cause of arguments and conflict among the offices operated by ODNI, thus limiting communication. The Intelligence Community has also failed to sufficiently define, incentivize and promote collaboration because some leaders support collaboration in the culture of protecting territory while others promote collaboration in principle. There are other issues in the interpretation of collaboration because some agencies in the Intelligence Community assume that collaboration implies that the Intelligence Community is managed only when the major agencies in the Intelligence Community agree. The Intelligence Community additionally lacks an overall leadership or strategy structure to promote collaboration among the law enforcement and national intelligence agencies. According to Maguire (2008), no official or agency has considered establishing authorities to allocate resources, providing training on intelligence and developing processes needed to prioritize and establish joint strategies, requirements and missions. The elements in the Intelligence Community also fail to effectively establish collaboration in the definition of requirements for acquisitions and systems. Managing the consolidated federal watch list for terrorists also lacs vital safeguards to ensure the integrity of data.
To promote the sharing of information, Maguire (2008) recommends Supporting directives offering policies at the Intelligence Community level to improve and expand access to information for the people in charge of analyzing data. The second recommendation is implementing all the recommendations in the OIG’s breakdown of the FISMA audit and sensitive intelligence report. The third recommendation is implementing the ODNI proposal for creating review boards on sensitive information. The fourth recommendation is developing and implementing an Intelligence Community plan for standardizing systems used for communication and streamlining the Intelligence Community data storage and sharing architecture to reduce redundancy and simplify access and retrieval of data. In promoting collaboration and integration, one of the recommendations made by Maguire (2008) is to define collaboration for the Intelligence Community to incorporate agency compliance with the decisions made by DNI. The second recommendation is to appoint a senior ODNI official in charge of enhancing integration and collaboration among and between traditional intelligence agencies.
By all accounts, the ICs (Intelligence Community) strive for a new identity and should start with how they are using their properly funded resources. Open-Source Intelligence is ridiculously hard to pass through each level, though, according to Eliot Jardines (President of Open-Source Publishing Inc.), who said, “…intelligence support is largely nonexistent below the federal level due to classification issues,” in a speech regarding OSINT (Hayward, 2007). Not only do all levels of the IC need to learn the application of technology and tools to assist IC analysts in performing the OSINT mission, but they also need less restrictions when accessing this data. This is slowly happening, and as technology develops, we are able to make it easier to access such data. Defense Intelligence Agency’s Office of Naval Intelligence Chief Data officer Ben Apple explained that “in the past, data was compartmentalized in applications with restricted access, but the intelligence community is currently breaking down the silos, providing analysts with new data and moving from forensic analysis to predictive (Thoennes, 2018).” By using all the information from OSINT, even the overfill information can shape a more focused direction of a terrorist act. No overfill information should be tossed into archives; usually, the smallest details can be the difference of ciphering coded messages and letters or understanding the cognitive ethology of the criminal. Therefore, OSINT can maintain political stability by helping governments to understand their people’s attitudes and to act promptly to avoid any future clashes with the public (Bule, 2020).”
Although, when specifically aimed missions require, Human intelligence (HUMINT), Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), Imagery Intelligence (IMINT), Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) and Measurement and Signatures Intelligence (MASINT) are all great collection intelligence practices; however, I believe that OSINT stands out over the rest and should be the primary source of intelligence collection.OSINT would have to be established as an equal partner with all the intelligence practices to foster collaboration so that they could all work together efficiently. OSINT could do a lot better and be used to its full potential if it had help from some of the other ICs. The mindset that classification is a measure of quality would need to be changed, too. As the author James Murphy stated, “there is no information that could be subject to proprietary constraints, as well as information gathered from sensitive and clandestine contacts. It does not include classified information, or any other information obtained from unknown sources (Murphy, 2020).”
Based on the findings discussed above, it is evident that the Intelligence Community is not working together in a timely manner to improve performance. The lack of collaboration affects the general performance of the Intelligence Community and the failure to achieve its goals. The connection between the failure to achieve organizational goals and lack of communication is a concept that is not only evident in the Intelligence Community but also in other organizations in other sectors. A study conducted in Ethiopia by Tannen (2013) established that interdepartmental pride results in a lack of communication among departments due to attitudinal barriers that are held by employees towards their colleagues. For example, if a manager has a bad attitude toward an employee in the junior staff, there may be a lack of effective communication between them particularly if the manager tends to impose things on the junior staff or intimidates them because they will not be free to share information with the managers. Some employees in various departments also have a negative attitude towards other employees who are not in the same department, especially those in a lower rank. Another study by Newstrom & Devis (2013) found that interdepartmental ses a lack of communication by preventing junior staff from accessing more information due to the stereotyping views of top departments towards junior staff, thus making conclusions about them before gathering more information from them. Gender plays a major role in stereotyping whereby some top-level employees may stereotype against female employees as lazy and avoid sharing information with them because their contribution to the organization is considered insignificant. Departments may also stereotype against one another based on past experiences.
Conclusion
This research has established that the Intelligence Community has failed to achieve some of its goals due to failure to share information and lack of collaboration. The issue of information processing errors in the Intelligence Community can be addressed using the recommendation of United States Marine Corps peer review author Major Lisa Tubridy who once said in her Executive Review, “regardless of the security level or type of communications required, a single agency, DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency), should be tasked with providing the necessary support. The goal is to consolidate resources under a single agency (Tubridy, 1996).” Meaning, we all should be working on the same page, this current day and age, meaning working with the DNI and the ODNI, not against them. The Intelligence Community should continue moving forward with a possible outlook for using the OSINT intelligence collection as its primary data collection source. With IC working together effectively and in a timely manner, the people will have peace of mind, and it could reshape Intelligence reform and help the IC run more smoothly. The issue of collaboration is still complex because it involves the willingness of every agency to work together. This may be hard because some agencies are above others and may feel that smaller agencies are taking up the time and resources that could be used to address other issues. Therefore, the best solution is setting up a collaboration framework and ensuring that collaboration and integration of all agencies is among the Intelligence Community policies and procedures.
References
Adaeze, E. E., & Nnenna, O. C. (2013). Communication as an Effective Tool in Organizational Growth. International Journal of Public Policy and Administration Research, 1.
Bansal, P., & Song, H. (2017). Similar but not the same: Differentiating corporate sustainability from corporate responsibility. Academy of Management Annals, 11(1), 105-149. https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2015.0095
Bule, G. (2020). A guide to open source intelligence (OSINT). ITSEC. https://itsec.group/blog-post-osint-guide-part-1.html
Bordeianu, S., & Lubas, R. (2013). Interaction between departments: Strategies for improving interdepartmental collaboration through communication. Workplace Culture in Academic Libraries, 219-230. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-1-84334-702-6.50014-9
Cooper, D. R., & Schindler, P. S. (2006). Business Research Methods (9th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.
Dennis, A. W. (2011). Understanding Fit and Appropriation Effects in Group Support Systems Via Meta-Analysis (5th ed.). Newyork: MIS Quarterly.
Harris, M., & Nelson, W. (2008). The Importance of Managerial Communication in Establishing the Company Marketing Communication [Paper presentation]. The International Conference on Administration and Business, University of Bucharest.
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Hayward, K. (2007). Situational crime prevention and its discontents: Rational choice theory versus the ‘Culture of now’. Crime Opportunity Theories, 323-341. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315095301-15
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Question 
Constant Shortfalls of Department Egos
Your final paper is where you will weave the first two elements (the White Paper and Literature Review) together and incorporate your analysis to create a coherent paper that is 13-15 pages in length. While it is inappropriate (not to mention a violation of university policy) to cut and paste past assignments in old courses into new ones, this research project is evolutionary and builds itself up from a research proposal to a completed product. For this reason, in this class, it is permissible to paste the information (as appropriate and as it makes sense) from the first two assignments assigned in this course into your final assignment.
Format. Your final paper should include a title page, body, and reference page. Your paper should have one-inch borders on all four sides, use times new roman-12 point font, be double spaced, and not have an extra space in-between paragraphs. (You may need to turn this off in MS word by going to “paragraph” and clicking “Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style). Since this is an INTL course you need to use the Turabian parenthetical citation style with a references page.
Your final paper should include the following sections:
Introduction.
This section should be written last and should pull from some of the elements of your white paper. You will need to clearly provide an overview of the topic you are writing about, a concise synopsis of the issues, state your issue, and discuss why the situation is important to investigate. Writing the introduction last is helpful in ensuring that you’ve incorporated any changes that may have taken place over the course of your research. This section should be about one page in length.
Literature Review.
Your literature review section is a synthesis of the sources that you identified in your second assignment in addition to other sources that you have identified to support your research. This section should be 5-6 pages in length.
Analysis and Findings.
This section and the conclusion discussed below are essentially the two newest components of your final paper. Your analysis and findings section should provide a narrative of your analysis and the analytical arguments that you will make as a result of your findings. In this section you will discuss the different information processing errors that occurred within your chosen situation and explain how they lead to or are leading to
errors in analysis and/or decision-making. Within this section you should provide the evidence that proves or disproves your hypothesis. This section should be 5-6 pages in length.
Conclusion. This section will contain the concluding analytical arguments based on what the analysis has revealed. Here you will discuss some of the techniques and strategies that can be used to help mitigate the information processing errors and/or decision-making errors that occurred during the situation under investigation.
Like any conclusion, it should provide a synopsis of the project, the strategy, the results, and what the analysis adds to our body of knowledge. Within your conclusion you should also offer suggestions for avenues of future research for other scholars as all knowledge is evolutionary. This section should be 1-2 pages in length.
References.
This section will contain all of the references that you have cited within your paper. They should be listed in Turabian References format and arranged alphabetically. Entitle this section as “References”, each source notation should be single spaced with one space between each source.
At this level your references should fall within the 10-15 sources range and be made up primarily of peer-reviewed content.