Understanding how administrators can commit unethical acts is an important goal of public administration research. This article tests whether moral inversion, taken from Balfour, Adams, and Nickels' theory of administrative evil, can help explain torture, and also proposes and tests Bandura's theory of moral disengagement. It analyzes testimony from perpetrators of torture who testified before the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996–2000. The results support moral inversion, as perpetrators stated that they believed their actions were morally justified. The results also support displacement of responsibility, as perpetrators shifted responsibility away from themselves and toward actors above or below them in the chain of command. However, the analysis does not support the theory of diffusion of responsibility, as perpetrators did not take the silence of officials outside of their chain of command as approval, but instead anticipated their disapproval and tried to conceal their actions.

中文翻译：

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行政罪恶与道德脱节：种族隔离时代南非的酷刑案例


了解管理者如何实施不道德行为是公共行政研究的一个重要目标。本文检验了贝尔福、亚当斯和尼克尔斯的行政之恶理论中的道德倒置是否有助于解释酷刑，并提出并检验了班杜拉的道德脱离理论。它分析了 1996 年至 2000 年在南非真相与和解委员会作证的酷刑肇事者的证词。结果支持道德倒置，因为肇事者表示他们相信自己的行为在道德上是合理的。研究结果还支持责任转移，因为肇事者将责任从自己身上转移到指挥系统中高于或低于自己的行为者身上。然而，分析并不支持责任分散理论，因为肇事者并没有将指挥系统之外官员的沉默视为认可，而是预期他们的反对并试图隐瞒自己的行为。