Hierarchical subordinates displace responsibility by presuming tacit approval from above

Evidence

Managerial officials believed they had tacit approval from above to participate in the antitrust activities. This absolved them of a sense of personal responsibility for their actions. Some felt constrained by their position in the chain of command to report that their supervisors were clandestinely supporting antitrust activities: “I had no power to go higher. I do not report to anyone except my superiors” (Herling, 1962). Still others knew about the price-fixing and bid rigging but remained silent because higher authorities might be covertly approving these very illegal activities. They feared that reporting the activities upward could cost them their jobs or advancement in their careers. Many employees simply worked hard at keeping themselves uninformed about what was going on. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1395

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the vault’s claims about ordinary people rationalizing support for harmful policy via group norms and hierarchy, and to Milgram-style obedience dynamics. — connects to: Accountability is responsive behavior, not merely answering to superiors
• ADDENDUM: The ‘willful ignorance to preserve plausible deniability’ theme could support the Islamophobia-justification claims in the vault, and shades of how ordinary functionaries rationalize policy harms.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1395