How we are all complicit in organisational lethality

All organisations have organisational lethality to varying degrees 

Many organisations may think they are immune to such lethality. I argue that they are wrong, and that all organisations exhibit hidden organisational lethality to varying degrees – and not just organisations where killing is visible such as the military, organised crime and terrorism. I extend organisational lethality to include all organisations which visibly kill through the production of goods such as weapons, fossil fuels and other pollutants, and also include organisations such as think tanks, consultancies, the media and, yes, academic institutions that frame such activities as necessary for competitiveness, growth or national security. 

This poses significant and complex challenges for social innovators. 

I realise that to apply a term like organisational lethality to all organisations may be perceived as too all-encompassing – as, surely, a health organisation cannot be compared to the military. Yet while many organisations seek to save rather than kill, I argue that they too are implicated in killing despite good intentions. That’s because I posit that all organisations are embedded in an economy with a death drive: lethal extractive and consumption practices that are deeply woven into the fabric of global socio-economic life, thus making the prevention of organisational lethality a profound ethical and systemic challenge for our age.

How wicked problems are perpetuated by legally sanctioned organisational practices 

Many esteemed organisational and management scholars have examined what are known as wicked problems, the grand societal challenges such as inequality in education and health, poverty and climate change. Yet such scholarship often overlooks the fact that these global problems are often perpetuated by legally sanctioned organisational practices such as fossil-fuel dependency that have become normalised. For example, despite unequivocal evidence that the planet’s future depends on moving away from fossil fuels, production and consumption is higher than ever. Toxins enter our bodies as we go about our everyday business – eating, drinking and breathing. Our bodies and planet have been remade by cumulative military and industrial projects through ‘attritional catastrophes’- such as radiation from nuclear testing, forever chemicals and lead in petrol. 

Attempts to reform the system through compliance or incremental change frequently fall short, as they do not address the underlying organisational and systemic logics that perpetuate organisational lethality. I argue that all organisations are complicit in organisational lethality by degree. For some, such as the military, the extensive capability and capacity for lethality is perceived as their legitimate function. For others, like tobacco companies, it arises from deliberate actions taken with full awareness of the high probability of deaths caused by the production and consumption of goods and services. 

Public, private and civil sector organisational lethality 

Public sector organisational lethality encompasses the legitimised use of lethal force in pursuit of strategic objectives and internal order, as well as laws and policies which harm targeted groups (such as genocide) and the planet (such as state maintenance of fossil fuel industries). Private sector organisational lethality primarily arises from the production and distribution of goods and services that kill – often knowingly perpetuated despite clear evidence of their lethal effects such as fossil fuels and tobacco.

The pursuit of profit also kills: pharmaceutical companies have frequently been criticized for setting prices at levels that make essential medicines inaccessible to many in the Global South. While the civil sector is typically seen as a virtuous force for good, civil sector organisations access grants and other resources from private or state organisations which are deeply implicated in organisational lethality practices. 

A warning and call to action for social innovators 

For social innovators, my analysis serves as both a warning and a call to action. Social innovators must confront the reality that all organisations, not just obviously harmful ones, possess some degree of organisational lethality. I argue further that social innovators are ethically compelled to understand the dimensions of organisational lethality within and between organisations as a prerequisite for any solutions. Moreover, as social innovators we must recognise our own complicity as even organisations with positive missions (like universities or non-governmental organisations) can indirectly enable or amplify organisational lethality through policy, partnerships and procurement. 

We need to shift from reactive mitigation of these issues to pre-emptive change, treating organisational lethality not as an inevitable or regretful by-product of organising but as a moral failure requiring urgent, collective action. An organisational lethality perspective challenges the prevailing notion that only certain sectors or overtly harmful organisations bear responsibility for killing. Only by confronting this uncomfortable reality can we begin to reimagine organisations as forces for regeneration and life, and social innovation can play a crucial role in this. 

There is an urgent need to switch from organisational lethality to its antithesis – organisational vitality – which I define as the capability and capacity of organisations to regenerate life, a transformation process which I will explore in a future essay in this series.