Informatologia, Vol. 52 No. 3-4, 2019.
Review article
https://doi.org/10.32914/i.52.3-4.7
DEFINING THE TERM "INTELLIGENCE" - INSIGHT INTO EXISTING INTELLIGENCE KNOWLEDGE
Tomislav Dokman
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
For more than half a century of Intelligence Studies, this field has been characterized by the problem of lack of uniform definition of the term intelligence, a contentious place in the corpus of existing knowledge. The determinant of this is the existence of different types of intelligence, that is, the term is related to the intelligence product or information, the process/cycle in which information is collected, processed, analyzed and disseminated, and to the intelligence producing organization. Furthermore, it is a broad concept that initially developed and presented itself throughout history as exclusive state property, only later to become an equally represented term in other fields, more specifically business, science, sports, etc. Defining the term "intelligence" is important not only for the sake of development of intelligence theory and scientific discipline, but also because of the practical part of "intelligence" which is an essential feature of every state as it provides support for state decision-making process and defining policies in the national security spectrum. The paper analyzes 35 scientific, expert and institutional definitions of the term intelligence using quantitative and qualitative content analysis. Qualitative content analysis identified 15 key elements. The quantitative analysis found that the most represented element was "information", followed by "end user/decision maker", followed by "actionable character", "foreign countries" and "knowledge". Based on the elements extracted, a new definition is presented. Intelligence is characterized by actionable knowledge of foreign/other countries that is disseminated towards end users, i.e. decision makers, in the form of information.
Keywords
intelligence; database; intelligence definitions; definition elements; intelligence studies
Hrčak ID:
234831
URI
Publication date:
30.12.2019.
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