Hannah Arendtâs discussion of evil in politics and administration has had a great impact on political philosophy. It seems appropriate to apply this theoretical framework for understanding evil in philosophy of management in business and administration. Therefore, the aim of this book is to provide the presentation of this concept in a historical and theoretical perspective. The concept of moral blindness finds its basis in Hannah Arendtâs philosophy of judgment and responsibility. Totalitarianism is radical evil. Bureaucracy is the instrument to realize radical evil. Nevertheless, the horrifying dimension of radical evil is that evildoers who often realize it, as persons are insignificant, ordinary, and banal. Arendt uses the figure of the Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann to analyze this concept of banality of evil in totalitarianismâs radical evil. With her description of the dimensions of the actions of the bureaucratic administrator in the totalitarian system, Arendt characterizes Eichmann as a clichĂŠ of a human being who was incapable of thought and moral reflection. Arendtâs analysis of Eichmann provides us with a basis for a social theory of evil in organizations and institutions.
In this book, we will highlight the essence of moral blindness in order to understand responsibility and judgment in business and administration. In addition, the aim of the book is to present interpretations of moral blindness, power, and domination in the perspective of the concept of systemic action in Arendtâs philosophy. Moreover, the book will look at moral blindness in bureaucracies as efficient and instrumental goal-rational organizational systems. We will go through different approaches to violence and dehumanization are a reality in modernity. This includes discussion of unconditional obedience as systemic rationality that characterize ordinary business people and administrators in organizations. There has been different experimental approaches to understand the phenomena of moral blindness in business and administration. An element of moral blindness comes from character transformations due to role-playing and acceptance of a structural role in an organizational system. Evil is in the structure of the system.
Thus, the book aims are clarifying the systematic elements of the concept of moral blindness in social theory. Moral blindness is characterized by conformity and dependency on the business corporation, institution, or administrative system. This means that moral blindness implies that the administrator or manager has no capacity of moral thinking. They only follow orders and justify their actions by reference to the technical goal-rationality of the organizational system. They are very dependent on the ideology, principles, or instrumental values of the organization. This attachment includes an abstraction from concrete human needs and concerns in the legal or administrative system, where members of the system identify with their role and position in the organization or administrative system. An element of this moral indifference is the cooperative role of the victims in evil by organizations and administrative systems. This means that moral blindness includes collaboration of the victims of the harm. They are forced to follow the rationality of the system and they identify with their roles either motivated by pure obedience or motivated by an attempt to minimize a greater harm. This instrumentalization implies a dehumanization of the victims that are considered not as human beings but as elements, things or functions of the system.
The structure of bureaucratic evil implies that bureaucrats in the system as cogs in a system are assigned specific tasks and role functions in organizational and administrative systems. The bureaucratic machine is structured in a way that each participant in the organization is accomplishing a specific work function with a specific task and he or she has no general overview of the organizational system. Moreover, both top managers and administrators may act irrationally beyond common human understandings of morality in order to serve the instrumental rationality of the organizational system. This can be accompanied by egoistic, opportunistic and cynical behavior of managers and administrators who in combination with the cog position in the system focus on personal survival and promotion in the system.
In addition, the function of administrative obedience is to realize the organizational aim becomes the central interest of the administrators of the organization. Obedience, role identification, and task commitment based on reward-sanction mechanisms in the system remains the central and ultimate virtue of the commitment of members of the organization to the organizational system. Each member or administrator of the organizational system commits themselves to the values of the organizational goal of the system. Here, moral blindness includes other forms of isolation of moral considerations from the systemic rationality of the system. Moral blindness is combined with moral muteness and moral deafness. Moral deafness is the inability to hear moral problems in the organization. Moral muteness is defined as the inability of people to defend their ideas and ideals. Moral blindness is a sort of cover notion that includes the concepts of moral muteness and moral deafness. Moreover, moral indifference can be defined as a camera that zooms on a specific focus and leaves everything else outside the specific focus of the system. In the case of the business corporation, the doctrine of limited liability can be said to constitute this kind of moral blindness of the business organization where no one is able to see the moral responsibility of the corporation. In the case of public administration, evil in administration can imply concentration on particular goals and instrumental outputs without taking into account ethical and moral consequences of actions. In addition moral blindness can be extended to other spheres of society for example in relation to the movement of disciplinary to control and surveillance society which characterizes the contemporary digital economy.
The aim of this analysis of moral blindness in business and administration is to give the foundation for a management philosophy of judgment and ethical formulation competency. Here, the book focuses on the relation between judgment and banality of evil: How can leaders who improve their practice of not doing letting evil happen? What is the practical advice with regard to judging this? In addition, how can the leader stand in this? What is the difference between the private and public sectors with regard to the question of the banality of evil? This is a very common question when it comes to organizations. Are they, e.g., equally âevil,â because all organizations are potential for committing banal evil? By asking these questions we will focus on moral awareness, ethics, and responsibility with regard to protection of the âthe right to have rights,â respect for humanity and plurality in contrast to moral blindness.
In this context, it is important to see this book as a further development of my earlier research on ethics basic ethical principles in bioethics (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen, Rendtorff, & Holen, 2018; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009). With basic ethical principles, this research moved toward ethics and values in management (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). This approach also included discussion of business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Moreover, the book can be seen ...
