Concealing past harm forces organizations into knowingly repeating the same harm

Evidence

Concealment has a price. Covering up past evidence is also likely to lead to maintaining the current practices that bring about the harms; it is at this point that I think such an organizational actor becomes evil, becomes an independent perpetrator of further negative acts now knowingly done. Historically, it is clear that shipyard managers or nuclear-plant managers concealed increasing amounts of evidence that made clear to them that working with asbestos or mining uranium (or even living downwind from nuclear plants) caused cancer. But often the failure to acknowledge past harms is to continue to commit those harms in the present. On one hand, this may be exactly what those who conceal intend to accomplish; they can continue practices that they now know are unsafe. But the psychological dynamics can be more complex. Consider the plight of the manager who, although he wants to conceal evidence of past harms, also wants to change current practices. It may not be possible. How can a shipyard worker who has worked with asbestos for 20 years interpret a sudden request to put on a filter mask? Thus it is often the case that, driven by a desire to hide past inadvertent harms, managers continue to have their workers operate in what they now know are dangerous settings, or otherwise engage in dangerous activities. They now do intentionally what they had previously done unknowingly. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4013

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The line between inadvertent and intentional evil is drawn not by first intent but by the decision to conceal — a genuinely paradigm-shifting account of how institutions become evil.
• XREF: Connects to Arendt’s banality of evil and to whistleblower literature on asbestos and nuclear industries. — connects to: Concealing past harms converts unknowing negligence into deliberate harm. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 4013
• ADDENDUM: Could fold into ‘On Sacrifice’ and adjacent accounts of how institutions rationalize ongoing harm; also pairs with how bureaucratic cover-ups (Iran-Contra) compound dishonor with continued wrongdoing.