"Unmasking Administrative Evil"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how, in "Understanding Administrative Evil", authors Guy B. Adams and Danny L. Balfour explore the idea and evolution of the concept of evil. It looks at how, over time, historical evil has evolved into administrative evil, a form of evil that is unique to modernity, and how the main differences between historical and administrative evil lie in the perpetrator's motivation. It analyzes how, to illustrate their arguments, Adams and Balfour cite numerous and varied cases of administrative evil, including the Jewish Holocaust, welfare reform, immigration, and the destructive organizational culture at NASA that spawned the Challenger tragedy.

From the Paper:

"To support their argument, Adams and Balfour apply their theory to a number of modern historical events. In their first study, the authors analyze the Holocaust, first by summarizing the debate between intentionalist and functionalist scholars. However, to fully understand the German society's complicity in the Holocaust, Adams and Balfour argue for a synthesis that the Holocaust grew out of a "confluence of historical and political forces, racist ideology and anti-Semitism, organizational competition and the bureaucratic processes of a highly developed modern society" (59)."

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