Organizations and History – Are There Any Lessons to Be Learned From Genocide?

Abstract

Purpose: The paper seeks to demonstrate that genocide is not a phenomenon marginal to the world of management and organizations, but one from which these disciplines stand to learn a lot and one to which they must contribute their own insights. Approach: A historical and sociological review of some of the voluminous literature on genocide and the Nazi Holocaust. Findings: Genocide is a highly organized process, requiring bureaucratic resources to initiate, sustain and, often, cover it up. It generates resistance and compliance, it makes use of material and social technologies, it is imbued with its own cultural values and assumptions and calls for its own morbid innovations and problem solving. Genocide requires the collaboration of numerous formal organizations, including armies, suppliers, intelligence and other services, but also informal networks and groups. Limitations: Given the vast literature on genocide and the Nazi Holocaust, obviously only a small sample of crucial texts were reviewed and cited. All the same, they are enough to demonstrate that democide is not carried out by sadistic maniacs or by impersonal bureaucrats in line with the banality of evil hypothesis. It is carried out by organizational members, managing and problem-solving realities whose horrors do not impede them in their decision making. Practical implications: At the same time, the authors argue that genocide cannot be studied outside historiography and that doing so leads to all kinds at gravely mistaken conclusions, even when theorized by distinguished scholars like Arendt and Bauman. Originality: The article debunks some widely espoused theories of genocide, including the adiaphorization and banality of evil theses.