Personnel Management in Secret Service Organizations

Book excerpt: While the careers of secret agents have inspired many genres of popular culture, relatively little research has been carried out until now on spying as a profession. Through the lens of personnel management, the authors offer a unique and compelling analysis of secret service employee biographies and autobiographies, giving the reader an improved understanding of people management in all organisations. Personnel Management in Secret Service Organizations pinpoints key events in an agent's career, focusing on how they enter their profession, how they perform espionage work; how they are trained and managed and what the circumstances of promotion and demotion might be, up to the point of exit from the profession (through retirement, capture, or death). Within this framework, it illustrates the ways that secret service organizations play a crucial role in contemporary societies. Drawing comparisons with personnel management in standard organizations, Personnel Management in Secret Service Organizations will be a valuable resource for researchers and students of management and organization. The use of narratology-inspired methods will appeal to younger scholars with an interest in organizational studies too.