Corporations deflect blame for industrial disasters even when fault is evident

Evidence

Displacement of responsibility is often enlisted in industrial disasters where the blame is blatantly evident. Corporate vindication is achieved by shifting the blame. For example, the world’s worst industrial disaster occurred in Bhopal, India, in 1984, when 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas escaped from Union Carbide’s pesticide production plant. Thousands of people were killed, others were seriously injured or partially disabled, and nearly 200,000 were severely affected in other ways (Weir, 1987). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2708

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Bhopal disaster as a classic case of corporate moral disengagement through responsibility displacement. — connects to: The atomic threat deflects public criticism away from causes inside industrial society; Corporate performance pressure causes labor violations that companies then externalize as managerial fault — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 291; Voters blame governments for privatized failures rather than the companies responsible — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 128