Management Communication Quarterly 1–27 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0893318915597300 mcq.sagepub.com Article Deconstituting al-Qa’ida: CCO Theory and the Decline and Dissolution of Hidden Organizations Hamilton Bean 1 and Ronald J. Buikema 2 Abstract This study reconceptualizes the decline and dissolution of hidden organizations using the four flows model of constitutive communication. Analyzing internal al-Qa’ida documents captured during the 2011 U.S. raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Osama Bin Laden, this study explains how losses of control over the flows of membership negotiation, self-structuring, activity coordination, and institutional positioning have both reflected and reinforced al-Qa’ida’s decline. Interventions inspired by a communicative constitution of organization (CCO) perspective are proposed as a way to accelerate al-Qa’ida’s dissolution. The implications of the four flows model for both counterterrorism strategy and theorizing hidden organizations are discussed. Keywords hidden organizations, al-Qa’ida, communicative constitution of organization, counterterrorism, organizational decline 1 University of Colorado Denver, Denver, USA 2 The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, USA Corresponding Author: Hamilton Bean, University of Colorado Denver, Campus Box 176, P.O. Box 173364, Denver, CO 80217-3364, USA. Email: hamilton.bean@ucdenver.edu 597300MCQ XX X 10.1177/0893318915597300Management Communication QuarterlyBean and Buikema research-article 2015 by guest on August 7, 2015 mcq.sagepub.com Downloaded from