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Despite the recognition of the importance of leaders for the formation and ongoing success of social and political movements, the study of leadership in terrorist groups remains underdeveloped. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to stimulate additional research into terrorist leadership in three main ways: by providing a broad overview of the theoretical perspectives that scholars have used to examine terrorist leadership, by critically reviewing the current state of the academic literature on terrorist leadership, and by presenting various ways in which future research on terrorist leadership can be improved.

This paper takes a conceptual and critical approach to reviewing the scholarly literature on terrorist leadership, and draws upon the author’s expertise with the wider multidisciplinary literature on leadership to make methodological and conceptual recommendations to improve related future research.

There is a paucity of empirical and theoretical research devoted to understanding important social and strategic aspects of terrorist leadership, and existing scholarly research is largely conducted in isolation with differing methodological and epistemological starting points. This has hampered efforts to measure, operationalize, and understand key concepts involving leadership in terrorist groups.

This paper provides several methodological and conceptual recommendations by which future research on terrorist leadership can be improved from insights taken from the wider scholarly literature on leadership. By virtue of being published in a criminology journal, this paper helps disseminate and expose key concepts in the study of terrorism to related disciplines.

This paper provides a general overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the study of terrorist leadership to scholars and students interested in the topic. It provides a foundational discussion of how the current literature on terrorist conceives of and utilizes the concept of leadership. It also provides methodological and conceptual recommendations to improve future research on terrorist leadership.

The chapter tries to highlight the critical importance of values to leadership, and argues that the research design of the ‘social scientific’ mainstream is incommensurable with the language of the scientific discipline that studies values: moral philosophy. The chapter shows that (a) through goals and actions, ethics is a central aspect of leadership and (b) that ethics cannot be reinterpreted as being ‘value-neutral’. Therefore, ‘effective’ leadership must always be connected to a specific value set. After arguing that leadership cannot be meaningfully looked at without reference to virtue ethics, two case studies are used to demonstrate the relationship between the two. By looking at two prominent terrorist leaders, the chapter shows how values are at the heart of their visions and actions. There are at least two practical implications: the study of leadership, and leadership education, must be reconnected with moral philosophy. The chapter connects three hitherto unconnected topics: leadership, (virtue) ethics and terrorism, presenting new insights into especially leadership.

This volume is dedicated to furthering our understanding of the importance of context in the development and application of leadership theory, advancing our knowledge of when, how, and under what conditions context matters most. Leadership is fundamentally a contextual phenomenon, constantly evolving, changing, and being applied in a specific environment. In this introductory chapter, I highlight key themes and aspects of dynamic and often paradoxical leadership across a wide domain of industries and contexts. First, I examine the importance of context across the chapters of the volume, including different domains, to different degrees, and from different theoretical angles. In some of the domains, context shapes the style or type of leadership that is needed, while in others, the context highlights to an extreme degree the aspects of leadership that may be invisible or less salient in different settings, but nevertheless characterize most leadership situations. I subsequently provide an overview of each of the chapters of the volume, examining leadership in the context of sports and competition, extreme “life or death” contexts, creative industries, and values-based and caring organizations. The four parts of the volume highlight leadership themes and connections across contexts and settings, including adaptability, dealing with paradox, and relational leader–follower and team dynamics.

From Al-Qaeda to the IRA, almost all terrorist organisations have experienced splits in some shape or form. This can spell the dawn of violent spoiler groups, but it may equally play a significant role in the overall politicisation of a group. The purpose of this paper is to provide a greater understanding of these splits by assessing the issue from a political organisational perspective.

The author proposes that by addressing splits through the lens of organisational survival, we may gain a greater insight into the process which takes place in the lead up to, and in the aftermath of, organisational cleavage.

It is posited that the rationale behind schism can, at times, be the result of a desire from at least one side to maintain the survival of the organisation in a form they both respect and recognise. In order to achieve this, it might require forming an independent, autonomous organisation, or alternatively promoting the exit of internal factional competitors.

Within the paper, three organisational hypotheses are proposed. It is vital that in order to assess their validity, these are empirically tested by future researchers.

To be able to counter terrorist organisations, one must first have an understanding of the external and internal events and processes. While much of our attention is on understanding paid to the external violent activity of the groups, we must also develop a significant understanding of the non-violent internal activities as well. This paper provides a theoretical basis for understanding one of these process, organisational split.

By addressing splits from an organisational survival viewpoint, the paper challenges the previously held assumption that splits should be analysed as part of the “end of terrorism.”

The independence of India from the British Empire was marked by its partition into two countries, viz India and Pakistan. As a corollary to independence and partition of India, 500‐odd princely states which had direct relationship with the British Empire were required to integrate with either India or Pakistan — the successor states. The process of integration of princely states was not without its highs and lows. Some of the princely states, like Hyderabad, Junagarh and Jammu and Kashmir, posed quite a few problems at the time of integration for several reasons, namely the inclination of its rulers, the religious component of the local population and the competing interests of the two successor states, India and Pakistan. Hyderabad and Junagarh were favourably resolved in India's favour. Integration of Jammu and Kashmir with India was not a smooth affair. It was only after Pakistan‐aided forces including the Pakistan army had invaded Jammu and Kashmir that the then ruler of Jammu and Kashmir signed the instrument of accession in India's favour. With the instrument of accession, India had a locus standi to protect its territory in Jammu and Kashmir by military means. The salvage operation of throwing the Pakistan‐aided forces and Pakistan military out of Jammu and Kashmir could not be accomplished fully, because India agreed that the United Nations, to which the Kashmir dispute was to be referred, would help in the resolution of the Kashmir issue within the accepted legal framework which was in India's favour. However, India's experience with the United Nations was a great disappointment. In fact India had put so much faith in the United Nations that it even agreed to a plebiscite in Kashmir for resolving the dispute, subject to the condition that Pakistan vacated the illegally occupied areas of Jammu and Kashmir. India need not have agreed to a plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir, but it did so because of its abiding faith in democratic principles, notwithstanding the legal framework on the basis of which the integration of other princely states with the successor states was carried out. To date, Pakistan has not vacated what is today called ‘Pakistan‐occupied Kashmir’. On top of that, in 1962 China gobbled up a large part of Kashmir in the north‐east, on the basis of a boundary dispute which it raised with India and which has yet to be resolved. To make matters still worse and more complicated, Pakistan ceded a part of Pakistan‐occupied territory to China. Thus the situation, as of today, is that 45.7 per cent of the 222,336 sq. km area of Jammu and Kashmir is with India, 35.1 per cent is with Pakistan and 19.2 per cent is with China. Apart from a war with China, two more full‐scale wars have been fought with Pakistan over Kashmir; the 1965 war, which was confined to the western theatre, and the 1971 war. The 1965 war was a short one and through the Soviet Union's mediation, an agreement was arrived at which was to no one's advantage and more or less restored the status quo ante. Following the 1971 war with Pakistan, India was in an advantageous position, because East Pakistan had ceded from West Pakistan and emerged as an independent country, the two‐nation theory to which Pakistan subscribed as the basis for partition of India into two successor states of India and Pakistan had been exploded; India had 90,000 Pakistan prisoners of war and it had also made large gains on the western front by occupying certain strategic positions. It was from this position of strength in 1971 that India decided that the Kashmir dispute had to be resolved bilaterally by India and Pakistan without any foreign intervention; a doctrine to which Pakistan subscribed at that point of time. In fact, India approached the bilateral talks between the two countries in a spirit of magnanimity. As a first step, India decided to return to Pakistan 90,000 prisoners of war. It agreed to a fresh demarcation of the Line of Control (including withdrawal from several strategic positions) on the unwritten understanding that this Line of Control, over a period of time, based on good neighbourly relations with Pakistan — supplemented by economic ties — would ultimately result in its becoming a de jure border from a de facto border with Pakistan; though the officially stated position continues to be that the whole of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India. The 1971 agreement with Pakistan, which is also called the ‘Shimla Agreement’, thus constitutes the principal plank for the settlement of the Kashmir issue with Pakistan on a bilateral basis.

One of the major exams of leadership skills of a leader is the challenge of managing conflicts within the organization or within society he heads. Perhaps, this is the biggest challenge especially when there is a situation of external threat on that society. In this situation when the leader who is unable to maintain internal cohesion, then the danger is that it will accelerate the breakdown in make it easier for the external enemy to destroy that society. The purpose of this paper is to explore how Jewish tradition, using formative ancient stories, tried to teach us how a leader should behave in a crisis, and how not to behave.

In this article, the author wants to show how Jewish tradition, using formative ancient stories, tried to teach us how a leader should behave in a crisis, and how not to behave. The rabbis of the Jewish tradition, that had written the Babylonian Talmud, reviewed the defeat of the Jewish people, in 70th as a failure of the leaders. Through the stories that tried to show us the responsibility of leadership, they pointed out the weaknesses of the leaders and saw them as the main person responsible for the loss occurred, when Jerusalem fell. In contrast, other stories show us how other leaders, deserved to overcome a major crisis and come out stronger.

The author wants to show how stories reveal three models of leadership: a weak and cowardly leadership that enables the growth of terrorist leadership, extreme and dogmatic leaders against tolerant leadership, leadership of nonviolent revolution. The situations in which leadership is being tested are varied. At the time of a great crisis of society at risk, during the siege of Jerusalem, one of the stories takes place precisely in the house, between two people, with the presence of leaders, to show the social disintegration among the common people, and the failure of leaders to build a moral society.

The positive example of overcoming the crisis and conflict, occurs after the destruction of Jerusalem in the Beit Midrash of the survivors in Yavneh. Perhaps the trauma of destruction leads the leaders to resolve the conflict in a nonviolent way.

The author tried to extract from the Jewish tradition the right model for managing crisis and conflict. The sages reflected on the serious crises that had happened to the Jewish people and they claimed that the leadership was the main cause of the failure.

Over the last 40 years or so, the concepts of terror and terrorism have permeated and infused political, social, and economic thought and lexicon. Given the symbolism and obvious ways in which the terms become socially constructed, terror and terrorism appear as ripened enough concepts for interactionist scrutiny. In general, interactionists have stressed that concepts applied to terrorism become useful to elites for promoting a master narrative along the lines that “free nations” must coordinate efforts and spend resources to defend against terrorist threats. We wish to extend this interactionist analysis in the following pages to provide a perspective on terrorist threats as evolving and emergent concepts, sensitive to historical and social changes. Drawing from a small number of Government and commercial print and online sources in order to identify patterns that emerge from the language, we reference terrorism handbooks starting from the 1970s to current, post “9/11” handbooks. We propose evolutionary timeframes demarcated by substantive events and changes in how we define, understand, and respond to an abstract threat made tangible and concrete. In effect, we suggest that such publications provide insight into how the dynamics of credibility associated with government, media, and “expert” assertions have framed public understandings of threat and danger. These handbooks serve as a heuristic model to draw general patterns and themes that demarcate significant time periods in our understanding of terrorism and responses to terrorism.

This paper presents an overview of the articles used in this edition of Advances in Health Care Management. The beginning of the article gives the reader a history of bioterrorist activity within the United States, and how these events have led to current situations. It also provides a model for health care leaders to follow when looking at a bioterrorist attack. The model includes descriptions of how the articles within this book relate to an overall bioterrorist formula. Through this, the reader shall be able to deduce which individual article fits into the vastness of healthcare research pertaining to bioterrorism.