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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT: IBM and the Holocaust both represent power, ideology, and rational administration. We view one as logical and commendable, the other as pathological and deplorable, and both as a manifestation of instrumental rationality. IBM and the Holocaust (Black 2001) explores the connect between IBM and its dynamic leader, Thomas J. Watson, and the program of genocide carried out against European Jewry over the 12-year reign of Germany's Third Reich. Those who controlled, applied, and supported IBM's information processing technology are implicated in operationalizing the lethal ideology of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party. Considering relationships between the fascist and the capitalist extremes provides a starting point in a dialogue that challenges the privileged position of instrumental rationality in evaluating choices related to the development, implementation, and application of information technology. The investigation of IBM and the Holocaust illustrates the potential for technology to reinforce, and be reinforced by, a prevailing ideology through the tangible manifestations of instrumental rationality: machines, professionals, and administrative structures. The ends to which the technology and its manifestations are applied by those implementing and supporting it become lost in striving to efficiently accomplish the immediate, intermediate tasks. The technological manifestations and their complicity in the Holocaust illustrate the inability of instrumental rationality to adequately incorporate the requisite ethical and moral dimensions, a lacuna no less present, though not so obvious, in actions undertaken within the current economic and political spheres by those employing the same tangible manifestations of instrumental rationality. The inability of those most directly implicated to reflexively consider the alliance of technology and ideology assures the continuing propensity of both good and evil. Unfortunately, the social systems that spawned the impressive technological developments do not provide adequate means for discerning and ethically evaluating the destructive and the creative potential.
Keywords: technical rationality; instrumental rationality; IBM, holocaust.
I saw the perpetrator. Was he so very different from all the accountants, all the engineers, all the professionals who by reason of something that touched their jurisdiction were drawn into the destructive work? --Hilberg (1980b, 100)
I. INTRODUCTION
This is an events study. The event is the Holocaust: (1) the historical episode wherein over six million European Jews were exterminated. The time period covers the Third Reich's 12-year reign, thus necessitating a time series analysis. Professional competence coupled with information processing technology (2) and standard statistical methods figure heavily in the undertaking. The presentation briefly reviews the underlying assumptions and develops a model based on the tenets of neoclassical Aryan supremacy theory. The following analysis assumes a social Darwinism (market efficiency) based on the traditional utilitarian principles of self-interest and utility maximization. Survival (market-based) criteria such as efficient utilization of resources determine winners and losers. Properly functioning, such systems maximize the overall social welfare and insure that the fittest survive. The influence of U.S. capitalists represents the focus of the investigation. IBM, its professional service personnel, and its charismatic CEO, Thomas J. Watson, comprise the sample selected. Abnormal returns from complicity with Axis elements characterize the criteria variable. Instrumental rationality, reflected in both engineering and administrative technology and economic ideology, are the independent variables. The study is relevant to accounting information systems (AIS) because it illustrates the potential for a partnership whereby information professionals provide value-added services to facilitate client organizations in achieving their strategic objectives.
IBM and the Holocaust, by Edwin Black (2001), investigates the role of IBM and its CEO in the Holocaust. The book scrutinizes IBM's actions and the profits acquired from dealings with the Third Reich. Of particular interest in the following discussion is the role of IBM's professional personnel in designing, implementing, and supporting the company's information processing technology. The work of Bauman (1989) is drawn upon in considering a related issue: the role played by instrumental rationality (3) in providing the legitimating grounds for the unquestioned application of facilitating technology. The cloak of instrumental rationality shields the perpetrators from considering their responsibilities beyond accomplishing the circumscribed, immediate tasks. IBM provided engineering and administrative technological support to the Third Reich. IBM and the Holocaust (Black 2001) documents the role played by these technicians and their technologies in the identification, segregation, transportation, and extermination of European Jewry. (4) Bauman (1989) argues that the unquestioned tendering of "management/professional services" to the Nazi program of genocide by dedicated professionals is a logical consequence of modernity's (5) infatuation with instrumental rationality, an infatuation that anticipates future genocidal possibilities.
In addressing any dimensions of the Holocaust, one is overwhelmed with the inhumanity and utter depravity motivating and emanating from the events. Words are inadequate to express one's sentiments, heightened awareness, revulsion, and inability to comprehend. Yet, the banality (6) of this evil emanates from pages containing commonplace words that describe the everyday actions of ordinary white men (7) carrying out their designated responsibilities and tasks. For these people, the ends are in some way lost in developing and implementing the means to efficiently and effectively accomplish the intermediate task, with instrumental rationality providing the evaluation criteria. Any comparison between, or analogies with, other events or manifestations and the Holocaust risk trivializing what took place. (8)
The subsequent discussion explores the relationship between the Holocaust and IBM, as reported primarily in IBM and the Holocaust (Black 2001). (9) The story illustrates how the ideological objectives of the Third Reich made use of a major technological advancement, data processing using Hollerith technology, (10) and the professional services provided by those who developed, applied, and controlled the technology. Profit, technology (both engineering and administrative), and genocide are allied. Two men, Thomas J. Watson and Adolph Hitler, enmeshed in two separate though not unrelated cultures at a common moment in history, legitimize their programs using the prevailing ideology of their societies: Watson, the commensurate capitalist, and Hitler, the Nazi. In his position as head of IBM and as the one ultimately responsible to the shareholders of the company, did Watson knowingly and explicitly support the genocidal activities of the Third Reich? Should Watson be characterized as a Nazi sympathizer, an amoral, power-motivated corporate executive, or a prudent businessman? (11)
We can possibly view the actions of Hitler and Watson as those of two extraordinary and uniquely charismatic leaders of their time. The people carrying out their programs cannot be so classified. A discussion of IBM and the Holocaust must address how and why ordinary, educated (professional) men of their time (Hilberg 1980a) could be capable of designing, implementing, and carrying out mass murder, i.e., genocide, on an incomprehensible scale. As part of such a discussion, one encounters the inherent interrelationship between the technology and the socio-political context within which it is conceived, nurtured, and channeled, and the doubled-edged implications of the technology's applications.
The story of IBM and the Holocaust demonstrates the ability of ideology to control and destroy through the professionals who develop, implement, and service technology. According to Bauman (15), (12) the Holocaust could have never taken place without the technology of modern industry and the organization of a bureaucratic administration, with its formal and ethical blindness in the pursuit of efficiency. The professional application of rational technology in conjunction with efficient administration achieved an unprecedented level of identification, segmentation, appropriation, transportation, and extermination. Once it was decided in 1941 that extermination was the appropriate means of addressing the "Jewish problem," genocide became an issue of departmental cooperation among various state bureaucracies in planning, budgeting, coordination, and marshaling necessary resources, enlisting appropriate technology, and designing and implementing suitable equipment (Bauman, 17). IBM's engineering and consulting services facilitated the efficient pursuit of the government's objectives.
The ensuing discussion is organized as follows. The first major section discusses the evidence provided in IBM and the Holocaust relating to the role of information processing technology and the related professional services in facilitating the Holocaust. The next major section considers the interrelationship between instrumental rationality and the circumstances and context that afforded the possibility of genocide on a heretofore unimaginable scale. Three primary manifestations of instrumental rationality are identified: machines, professions, and bureaucracy, followed by the exploration of the implementation of ideology through scientific and administrative rationality. The third major section argues that the Holocaust was a consequence of modernity. The essay ends with brief concluding comments.
II. IBM AND THE HOLOCAUST
IBM and the Holocaust endeavors to tell "the story of IBM's conscious involvement--directly and through subsidiaries--in the Holocaust, as well as its involvement in the Nazi war machine that murdered millions throughout Europe." (See Black, 7.) The author has compiled an extensive amount of historical information concerning IBM's relationship with the Third Reich and benefits that might have accrued to the company. Watson is portrayed as the unscrupulous, self-serving, motivating force behind the company's relationship with the Hitler regime (Black, 31ff). The information as presented suggests that IBM and Watson supported the Third Reich's activities by supplying equipment and professional services--expertise, training, and personnel. The evidence presented seems to support the position that IBM...
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