Osama bin Laden was not the "puppet master" of jihadi groups around the world and complained of what he called their "incompetence."
The information was found in an analysis of documents seized from his hideout in Pakistan.
The Combating Terrorism Center posted on its website 17 declassified documents taken in the raid on bin Laden's house in Abbottabad.
The CTC is a privately funded research centre at the US Military Academy at West Point.
The report said the al-Qaeda leader, who was behind the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US, "was unimpressed by the recent trend of American populist jihad."
He also appeared to have little regard for Anwar al-Awlaki accused of instigating a number of violent al-Qaeda attacks from Yemen.
Awalki, an American citizen, was killed in a US drone strike last year.
Awlaki is mentioned in one letter, assessed to be from bin Laden who writes, as translated: "I hope that he be informed of us still needing more information from the battlefield in Yemen, so that it is feasible for us, with the help of God, to make the most appropriate decision to either escalate or calm down."
The 17 documents are electronic letters or draft letters totalling 175 pages in the original Arabic, dating from September 2006 to April 2011, and they do not all state who wrote or received them.
US intelligence officials have said al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which operates from Yemen, has emerged as the most dangerous affiliate.
But according to the West Point study, bin Laden himself regarded many of al-Qaeda's affiliated groups, including the ones feared by the West, with disdain.
The letters show that bin Laden worried about AQAP, the Yemeni affiliate, and urged its leadership to focus efforts on attacking the United States rather than the Yemeni government or security forces, the report said.
It said the confiscated material showed that the actions of another affiliate, al-Qaeda in Iraq was of particular concern to
bin Laden, especially its killing of Shia civilians following the US invasion of Iraq.
One of al Qaeda's main English-language spokesmen, American-born Adam Gadahn, even suggested that the main al-Qaeda group should disassociate itself from al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Bin Laden also apparently wanted to keep al-Qaeda's Somalia-based affiliate, Al Shabaab, at arm's length, the study says, because he was concerned about its poor organization, management and brutality.
The report said that bin Laden's relationship with the TTP, one of the main Pakistan-based Taliban groups, was so strained that the group almost came into "direct and public confrontation" with al-Qaeda's central leadership over its indiscriminate attacks on Muslim civilians.
