ABSTRACT
Decision-making processes can be significantly colored by beliefs regarding the nature of the political universe. This is particularly true of organizations with relatively small leadership circles operating under conditions of high threat. The Operational Code approach provides a reproducible means (by way of computerized content analysis) of deriving estimates of these beliefs in a form suitable for quantitative comparison. This paper provides operational code analyses of two organizations (al-Qaeda and Hamas) and compares their operational codes to a control group and to each other in an effort to demonstrate both the strengths and weaknesses of this approach when applied beyond its usual subject matter of individual state leaders.
