Organizations deliberately harm others when corporate ideology and fear of job loss align.

Evidence

I suggest there is a third way that many organizations cause harm. Bluntly put, they set out to do it. That is, their corporate ideologies make it appropriate to harm others, and the conditions of life include elements Staub identified as important in facilitating the development of genocidal practices. Reading Staub, while reading several other similar books at the same time, caused, as the saying goes, the penny to drop. That is, it occurred to me that many elements of Staub’s analysis could be used to analyze some otherwise puzzling things that occur within organizations, which may explain how those organizations come to initiate harmdoing acts and convert their members into evil individuals. In many organizations, the members are in fear of losing their positions; thus, even if they are well-to-do, they are experiencing difficult life conditions. Only if they perform up to a certain level will they keep their jobs. Or perhaps more interestingly, only if they perform up to very high levels will they advance within a corporation. Echoing Staub, to be deprived of opportunities is to be in danger in a competitive Social organization for the production of evil 537 corporate environment. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4019

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes the already-read Staub material on difficult life conditions breeding genocide, here transplanted to corporate career anxiety — a striking re-deployment of a genocidal framework onto mundane organizational life. — connects to: Corporate performance pressure causes labor violations that companies then externalize as managerial fault — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 291
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘difficult life conditions’ framed as a threshold of job insecurity — asking how precarious employment normalizes everyday corporate harmdoing as leadership’s preferred management lever.