Hiding past harm forces managers to repeat harms knowingly

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

How, for instance, could we halt or limit the tendency of organizations to cover up past harms, and in the process inadvertantly commit themselves to perpetrate future ones? Other writers who have contributed to what I have called the social psychological perspective on evil clearly direct us to these questions. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4038 (#expands, via linked claim)

Smart officials do not engage in profitable suspect activities knowingly. They do so tacitly with an organizationally structured system of deniability for the upper echelon. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1579 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Concealing past harms converts unknowing negligence into deliberate harm. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 4013; Covering up past harms changes accidental harm into knowing intent; Concealing past harm forces organizations into knowingly repeating the same harm — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4013 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Concealing past harm forces organizations into knowingly repeating the same harm #expands (0.97) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4013
• Organizations that cover up past harms commit themselves to future wrongdoing #expands (0.95) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4038
• Organizationally structured deniability keeps executives from knowing wrongdoing #complicates (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1579
• Perpetrators minimize grave harms by relabeling them as mere misconduct #complicates (0.82) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 521
• Effective systems of wrongdoing recruit dutiful subordinates who disown responsibility for harm #complicates (0.76)