An act of harm-doing is commonly regarded by our society as an individualistic behaviour of which only the offending individual is responsible, but according to JM Darley, harm is inflicted on victims by individuals belonging to an organisation and such individuals are converted into harm-doers by the organisation. Darley also believes that organisations of social control (army, police, government) are more inclined to perform evil acts but other organisations including business corporations are also capable of such evil-doing and in fact "entrain individuals into evil doing processes" (Darley 1994).
Whilst I believe that there are particular features and processes of business organisations which tend to generate wrong doing and such organisations may influence individuals to perform evil acts I don't believe that under normal circumstances individuals are compelled by an organisation to perform such acts because ultimately - all individuals possess free will. I will justify my opinion by answering the following three questions - What is evil doing? Why may individuals within a business organisation feel obligated to perform evil acts? Are individuals free to decide whether or not they perform evil acts? .
Evil in its simplest form is the opposite of good and remains synonymous with thoughts of Hitler, the holocaust, September 11th and other such malevolent events. An evil act is described by Darley as "a class of actions, in which innocent individuals are severely harmed, and this harm is done intentionally, as "evil" actions." .
In a business context, such harm may be inflicted on innocent individuals in the process of making profit. A fictitious example of this would be for a cinema complex to intentionally sell a number of tickets to a movie screening that exceeds the available number of seats in that screening and then offer disgruntled customers a ticket to another less popular movie that may not be selling too well.
