Sebastiaan Rietjen
Biographic Data
| ID | 315464 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sebastiaan Rietjen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sebastiaan |
| FAMILY NAME | Rietjen |
| SIGNATURE | RIETJEN S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Netherlands Defence Academy |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0847-9020 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 36 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
How intelligence organisations innovate
Practitioners and academics recognize the importance of innovative intelligence organisations. However, we know little about how intelligence organisations innovate and what challenges they are being confronted with. Drawing upon intelligence studies as well as innovation and organisational studies this paper forwards a conceptual framework to answer the question: how do intelligence organisations innovate? To address this, we introduce the conce…
‘No guts, no glory’: Transforming intelligence for the digital age. An interview with Sebastian Reyn
How do intelligence services navigate the complexities of digital transformation? This article presents two interviews with Dr Sebastian Reyn, former deputy director of the Netherlands Defence Intelligence and Security Service (DISS), discussing the demands this transformation places on the management of intelligence services. Digital transformation is about leveraging digital technologies and data to fulfil intelligence missions while maintainin…
Learning in complex public systems: The case of Minusma’s intelligence organization
Public systems are facing increasingly complex challenges such as poverty and terrorism. In this paper, we seek to demonstrate the theoretical as well as practical value of complexity science, by investigating how key characteristics of a Complex Adaptive System (CAS) work out in practice within the intelligence organization of the ongoing nation-building mission in Mali (MINUSMA). Our main finding is that the learning properties of the CAS suffe…
The Social Ties that Bind: Unraveling the Role of Trust in International Intelligence Cooperation
International cooperation between intelligence services poses a dilemma. It is an important tool in countering today’s complex transnational threats, but at the same time, cooperation is a risky business. Intelligence services can never be sure that a partner will reciprocate in kind. Scholars and practitioners often identify trust as one of the foremost conditions to overcome this dilemma. Yet the notion of trust is seldomly conceptualized in th…
Coming to Grips with Hybrid Warfare: Mikael Weismann, Niklas Nilsson, Björn Palmertz, and Per Thunholm: Hybrid Warfare: Security and Asymmetric Conflict in International Relations , I.B. Tauris, Londo…
Intelligence and the Military: Introduction
Governments spend heavily on intelligence to support their militaries at tactical, operational, and strategic levels. This happens in many different mission areas, abroad as well as at home, and in
Nato’s Struggle for Intelligence in Afghanistan
What role did North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the coalition (International Security Assistance Force—ISAF) it led play in the failure of the West in Afghanistan? This essay argues that the ISAF intelligence community’s inability to come to grips with the complex operational environment in Afghanistan contributed to the problem. Using three concepts from the complexity literature, requisite variety, learning, and enactment, I analyze…
Meaning making in peacekeeping missions: Mandate interpretation and multinational collaboration in the UN mission in Mali
Peacekeeping helps to prevent conflict and to protect civilians. But how does it work to achieve those aims? Notwithstanding a growing recognition that peacekeeping mandates alone do not directly determine what actually happens in the field, we still know little about how—once deployed—military units translate an ambiguous mandate into action. In this paper, we focus on one dimension of peacekeepers’ behavior that has become increasingly importan…
Towards a cultural perspective on the absorption of emerging technologies in military organizations
Absorbing emerging technologies is crucial to the success of intelligence and security organizations. Scholars, however, tend to overlook the role of cultural traits in this process. Focusing on military organizations, this paper questions how military organizational culture shapes the absorption of emerging technologies. It draws upon literatures of military innovation, technology absorption and military sociology and empirically studies the abs…
Producer-client paradigms for defense intelligence
This article examines how specific characteristics of defense intelligence affect the relationship between intelligence producers and their clients in a manner that is different from prevailing conceptualizations commonly found in civilian intelligence organizations. To do so, the paper first addresses some important distinguishing characteristics of defense intelligence. These include the embedded character of defense intelligence agencies in mi…
Intelligence in defence organizations: A tour de force
Intelligence in defence organizations is widely seen as an under-researched topic. This paper assesses this claim and, by means of a metareview, systematically analyses the body of literature that has focused on intelligence in defence organizations between 2009 and 2018. The review includes 13 key journals on intelligence studies (e.g., Intelligence and National Security), military studies (e.g., Small Wars and Insurgencies) and conflict and pea…
Explaining the Cultures of Intelligence
The notion of culture is one of the most useful conceptual tools for explaining regularities in human behavior. Yet, its all-embracing nature makes it difficult to grasp. The classic definition of
Unraveling Disinformation: The Case of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17
Disinformation has become an important aspect within today’s security environment. However, despite the burgeoning literature on the topic, only few studies deconstruct the concept of disinformation by making use of empirical evidence. This article intends to contribute to our understanding of disinformation, by analyzing the numerous deceptive messages that were spread in the aftermath of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, that crashed in the summer…
Understanding Coherence in UN Peacekeeping: A Conceptual Framework
Coherence is a core objective in most multinational interventions and seems of particular relevance to UN peacekeeping missions with their increasing complexity and multidimensionality. Yet, coherence has rarely been studied empirically. We borrow the concept of ‘fit’ from organizational theory and use it to develop a conceptual framework to study coherence in peacekeeping operations. Fit is the degree of match between what is required by the man…
Intergroup behavior in military multiteam systems
The use of multiteam systems is increasing rapidly, as the diversity in skills and knowledge they supply assists organizations in responding more effectively to volatile environments. Multiteam systems consist of teams that depend on each other to achieve a common overarching goal, while simultaneously pursuing different proximal goals. However, multiteam systems often struggle to achieve the expected level of synergy. Multiteam system scholars h…
UN Peacekeeping Intelligence: The Asifu Experiment
Today’s military missions are often broad in scope and face a multitude of \npolitical, socio-economic, and security challenges. Enemy-centric \nintelligence is therefore no longer sufficient. Based on their experiences in \nAfghanistan, retired General Michael T. Flynn and his colleagues noted \nthat U.S. and allied forces were unable to answer the fundamental questions about their operational environment and the people they sought to \npersuade…
Effective Civil-Military Interaction in Peace Operations: Theory and Practice
Integrated disaster relief logistics: A Stepping Stone Towards Viable Civil-Military Networks
The twenty-first century has seen a significant rise in all forms of disasters and this has resulted in military and humanitarian organisations becoming more frequently engaged in the provision of support to those affected. Achieving an efficient and effective logistic preparation and response is one of the key elements in mitigating the impact of such events, but the establishment of mechanisms to deliver an appropriately integrated civil-milita…
Learning from Afghanistan: Towards a compass for civil-military coordination
Uruzgan Province is widely seen as one of the few areas where positive developments occurred in Afghanistan's south. A major reason for this success is believed to be the comprehensive approach that was adopted to address the complex and multifaceted nature of problems. This article analyses the coordination between the Dutch military and the wide variety of civil actors that took place during the period 2006–2010 in Uruzgan as this was a key ele…
Analysing the Outputs of Reconstruction Efforts in Afghanistan
This article examines the outputs of the Afghan reconstruction process in which the military of 42 countries and many international and local humanitarian organisations are engaged. It presents data containing detailed information on approximately 85,000 projects carried out between 2002 and 2007, which have been used primarily for coordination purposes. The article explores how the dataset might be used to measure the outputs of the reconstructi…
Inter-organisational communication in civil-military cooperation during complex emergencies: A case study in Afghanistan1
This paper seeks to contribute to an improved information management and exchange between humanitarian organisations and military agents in complex emergencies. To do so, a theoretical information management process model was developed and applied to the case of information management between International Security Assistance Force troops and humanitarian organisations such as Cordaid, DACAAR and the International Office for Migration in Kabul, A…
Managing Civil-Military Cooperation: Experiences from the Dutch Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan
From a management perspective, this article presents a process model to analyze cooperation between military and civilian actors in peace support operations. By means of multiple case study research, the article applies the model to eight partnerships between the Dutch Provincial Reconstruction Team and civilian actors (nongovernmental organizations, district governors, local constructors) in Baghlan, Afghanistan. These partnerships include explo…
Co‐ordinating humanitarian operations in peace support missions
Purpose This paper seeks to contribute to a more effective co‐ordination of humanitarian operations by military and civilian organizations involved in a peace support mission in response to a complex emergency. Design/methodology/approach The information processing view, in particular Galbraith's typology of generic mechanisms for achieving co‐ordination, is taken as the theoretical framework. This framework is subsequently applied to the co‐ordi…
Linking Provincial Reconstruction Teams to Security Enhancement in Afghanistan
Description to be added
Understanding Coherence in UN Peacekeeping: A Conceptual Framework
Coherence is a core objective in most multinational interventions and seems of particular relevance to UN peacekeeping missions with their increasing complexity and multidimensionality. Yet, coherence has rarely been studied empirically. We borrow the concept of ‘fit’ from organizational theory and use it to develop a conceptual framework to study coherence in peacekeeping operations. Fit is the degree of match between what is required by the man…
Meaning making in peacekeeping missions: Mandate interpretation and multinational collaboration in the UN mission in Mali
Peacekeeping helps to prevent conflict and to protect civilians. But how does it work to achieve those aims? Notwithstanding a growing recognition that peacekeeping mandates alone do not directly determine what actually happens in the field, we still know little about how—once deployed—military units translate an ambiguous mandate into action. In this paper, we focus on one dimension of peacekeepers’ behavior that has become increasingly importan…
Managing Civil-Military Cooperation: Experiences from the Dutch Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan
From a management perspective, this article presents a process model to analyze cooperation between military and civilian actors in peace support operations. By means of multiple case study research, the article applies the model to eight partnerships between the Dutch Provincial Reconstruction Team and civilian actors (nongovernmental organizations, district governors, local constructors) in Baghlan, Afghanistan. These partnerships include explo…
Integrated disaster relief logistics: A Stepping Stone Towards Viable Civil-Military Networks
The twenty-first century has seen a significant rise in all forms of disasters and this has resulted in military and humanitarian organisations becoming more frequently engaged in the provision of support to those affected. Achieving an efficient and effective logistic preparation and response is one of the key elements in mitigating the impact of such events, but the establishment of mechanisms to deliver an appropriately integrated civil-milita…
Nato’s Struggle for Intelligence in Afghanistan
What role did North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the coalition (International Security Assistance Force—ISAF) it led play in the failure of the West in Afghanistan? This essay argues that the ISAF intelligence community’s inability to come to grips with the complex operational environment in Afghanistan contributed to the problem. Using three concepts from the complexity literature, requisite variety, learning, and enactment, I analyze…
Inter-organisational communication in civil-military cooperation during complex emergencies: A case study in Afghanistan1
This paper seeks to contribute to an improved information management and exchange between humanitarian organisations and military agents in complex emergencies. To do so, a theoretical information management process model was developed and applied to the case of information management between International Security Assistance Force troops and humanitarian organisations such as Cordaid, DACAAR and the International Office for Migration in Kabul, A…
Linking Provincial Reconstruction Teams to Security Enhancement in Afghanistan
Description to be added
Learning from Afghanistan: Towards a compass for civil-military coordination
Uruzgan Province is widely seen as one of the few areas where positive developments occurred in Afghanistan's south. A major reason for this success is believed to be the comprehensive approach that was adopted to address the complex and multifaceted nature of problems. This article analyses the coordination between the Dutch military and the wide variety of civil actors that took place during the period 2006–2010 in Uruzgan as this was a key ele…
Co‐ordinating humanitarian operations in peace support missions
Purpose This paper seeks to contribute to a more effective co‐ordination of humanitarian operations by military and civilian organizations involved in a peace support mission in response to a complex emergency. Design/methodology/approach The information processing view, in particular Galbraith's typology of generic mechanisms for achieving co‐ordination, is taken as the theoretical framework. This framework is subsequently applied to the co‐ordi…
Linking Provincial Reconstruction Teams to Security Enhancement in Afghanistan
Description to be added
Managing Civil-Military Cooperation: Experiences from the Dutch Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan
From a management perspective, this article presents a process model to analyze cooperation between military and civilian actors in peace support operations. By means of multiple case study research, the article applies the model to eight partnerships between the Dutch Provincial Reconstruction Team and civilian actors (nongovernmental organizations, district governors, local constructors) in Baghlan, Afghanistan. These partnerships include explo…
Inter-organisational communication in civil-military cooperation during complex emergencies: A case study in Afghanistan1
This paper seeks to contribute to an improved information management and exchange between humanitarian organisations and military agents in complex emergencies. To do so, a theoretical information management process model was developed and applied to the case of information management between International Security Assistance Force troops and humanitarian organisations such as Cordaid, DACAAR and the International Office for Migration in Kabul, A…
Analysing the Outputs of Reconstruction Efforts in Afghanistan
This article examines the outputs of the Afghan reconstruction process in which the military of 42 countries and many international and local humanitarian organisations are engaged. It presents data containing detailed information on approximately 85,000 projects carried out between 2002 and 2007, which have been used primarily for coordination purposes. The article explores how the dataset might be used to measure the outputs of the reconstructi…
Learning from Afghanistan: Towards a compass for civil-military coordination
Uruzgan Province is widely seen as one of the few areas where positive developments occurred in Afghanistan's south. A major reason for this success is believed to be the comprehensive approach that was adopted to address the complex and multifaceted nature of problems. This article analyses the coordination between the Dutch military and the wide variety of civil actors that took place during the period 2006–2010 in Uruzgan as this was a key ele…
Effective Civil-Military Interaction in Peace Operations: Theory and Practice
Integrated disaster relief logistics: A Stepping Stone Towards Viable Civil-Military Networks
The twenty-first century has seen a significant rise in all forms of disasters and this has resulted in military and humanitarian organisations becoming more frequently engaged in the provision of support to those affected. Achieving an efficient and effective logistic preparation and response is one of the key elements in mitigating the impact of such events, but the establishment of mechanisms to deliver an appropriately integrated civil-milita…
UN Peacekeeping Intelligence: The Asifu Experiment
Today’s military missions are often broad in scope and face a multitude of \npolitical, socio-economic, and security challenges. Enemy-centric \nintelligence is therefore no longer sufficient. Based on their experiences in \nAfghanistan, retired General Michael T. Flynn and his colleagues noted \nthat U.S. and allied forces were unable to answer the fundamental questions about their operational environment and the people they sought to \npersuade…
Explaining the Cultures of Intelligence
The notion of culture is one of the most useful conceptual tools for explaining regularities in human behavior. Yet, its all-embracing nature makes it difficult to grasp. The classic definition of
Unraveling Disinformation: The Case of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17
Disinformation has become an important aspect within today’s security environment. However, despite the burgeoning literature on the topic, only few studies deconstruct the concept of disinformation by making use of empirical evidence. This article intends to contribute to our understanding of disinformation, by analyzing the numerous deceptive messages that were spread in the aftermath of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, that crashed in the summer…
Understanding Coherence in UN Peacekeeping: A Conceptual Framework
Coherence is a core objective in most multinational interventions and seems of particular relevance to UN peacekeeping missions with their increasing complexity and multidimensionality. Yet, coherence has rarely been studied empirically. We borrow the concept of ‘fit’ from organizational theory and use it to develop a conceptual framework to study coherence in peacekeeping operations. Fit is the degree of match between what is required by the man…
Intergroup behavior in military multiteam systems
The use of multiteam systems is increasing rapidly, as the diversity in skills and knowledge they supply assists organizations in responding more effectively to volatile environments. Multiteam systems consist of teams that depend on each other to achieve a common overarching goal, while simultaneously pursuing different proximal goals. However, multiteam systems often struggle to achieve the expected level of synergy. Multiteam system scholars h…
Intelligence in defence organizations: A tour de force
Intelligence in defence organizations is widely seen as an under-researched topic. This paper assesses this claim and, by means of a metareview, systematically analyses the body of literature that has focused on intelligence in defence organizations between 2009 and 2018. The review includes 13 key journals on intelligence studies (e.g., Intelligence and National Security), military studies (e.g., Small Wars and Insurgencies) and conflict and pea…
Towards a cultural perspective on the absorption of emerging technologies in military organizations
Absorbing emerging technologies is crucial to the success of intelligence and security organizations. Scholars, however, tend to overlook the role of cultural traits in this process. Focusing on military organizations, this paper questions how military organizational culture shapes the absorption of emerging technologies. It draws upon literatures of military innovation, technology absorption and military sociology and empirically studies the abs…
Producer-client paradigms for defense intelligence
This article examines how specific characteristics of defense intelligence affect the relationship between intelligence producers and their clients in a manner that is different from prevailing conceptualizations commonly found in civilian intelligence organizations. To do so, the paper first addresses some important distinguishing characteristics of defense intelligence. These include the embedded character of defense intelligence agencies in mi…
Learning in complex public systems: The case of Minusma’s intelligence organization
Public systems are facing increasingly complex challenges such as poverty and terrorism. In this paper, we seek to demonstrate the theoretical as well as practical value of complexity science, by investigating how key characteristics of a Complex Adaptive System (CAS) work out in practice within the intelligence organization of the ongoing nation-building mission in Mali (MINUSMA). Our main finding is that the learning properties of the CAS suffe…
The Social Ties that Bind: Unraveling the Role of Trust in International Intelligence Cooperation
International cooperation between intelligence services poses a dilemma. It is an important tool in countering today’s complex transnational threats, but at the same time, cooperation is a risky business. Intelligence services can never be sure that a partner will reciprocate in kind. Scholars and practitioners often identify trust as one of the foremost conditions to overcome this dilemma. Yet the notion of trust is seldomly conceptualized in th…
Coming to Grips with Hybrid Warfare: Mikael Weismann, Niklas Nilsson, Björn Palmertz, and Per Thunholm: Hybrid Warfare: Security and Asymmetric Conflict in International Relations , I.B. Tauris, Londo…
Intelligence and the Military: Introduction
Governments spend heavily on intelligence to support their militaries at tactical, operational, and strategic levels. This happens in many different mission areas, abroad as well as at home, and in
Nato’s Struggle for Intelligence in Afghanistan
What role did North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the coalition (International Security Assistance Force—ISAF) it led play in the failure of the West in Afghanistan? This essay argues that the ISAF intelligence community’s inability to come to grips with the complex operational environment in Afghanistan contributed to the problem. Using three concepts from the complexity literature, requisite variety, learning, and enactment, I analyze…
Meaning making in peacekeeping missions: Mandate interpretation and multinational collaboration in the UN mission in Mali
Peacekeeping helps to prevent conflict and to protect civilians. But how does it work to achieve those aims? Notwithstanding a growing recognition that peacekeeping mandates alone do not directly determine what actually happens in the field, we still know little about how—once deployed—military units translate an ambiguous mandate into action. In this paper, we focus on one dimension of peacekeepers’ behavior that has become increasingly importan…
How intelligence organisations innovate
Practitioners and academics recognize the importance of innovative intelligence organisations. However, we know little about how intelligence organisations innovate and what challenges they are being confronted with. Drawing upon intelligence studies as well as innovation and organisational studies this paper forwards a conceptual framework to answer the question: how do intelligence organisations innovate? To address this, we introduce the conce…
‘No guts, no glory’: Transforming intelligence for the digital age. An interview with Sebastian Reyn
How do intelligence services navigate the complexities of digital transformation? This article presents two interviews with Dr Sebastian Reyn, former deputy director of the Netherlands Defence Intelligence and Security Service (DISS), discussing the demands this transformation places on the management of intelligence services. Digital transformation is about leveraging digital technologies and data to fulfil intelligence missions while maintainin…
Political science (21 works) · Computer Science (18 works) · Law (15 works) · Engineering (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Computer security (8 works) · Peacebuilding and International Security (8 works) · Intelligence, Security, War Strategy (7 works) · Knowledge management (6 works) · Public relations (6 works)