Corporate Evil: A Story of Systems and Silences

Corporate evil often wears an impersonal, bureaucratic face. Corporations operate through systems that simultaneously give effect to, yet also deflect attention from, their purposes, values and beliefs. Thus, even very egregious and repeated wrongdoing can be framed in terms of the familiar, exculpatory narrative of ‘a problem with the system’ or an ‘administrative error’. Consistently, corporate culpability is often framed in terms of ‘omissions’ and ‘deficiencies’ rather than in positive terms of blameworthiness and responsibility. It is possible, however, fundamentally to challenge these narratives. ‘Systems intentionality’ proposes that corporate systems manifest their states of mind through their systems, policies and practices. On this account, systems are inherently purposive and reveal corporations’ knowledge through their objective design. From this perspective, omissions and gaps built into a system may be understood as a matter of choice.