Officers are held accountable to a lower degree by their own army. They are held accountable to a higher degree by other armies. That is completely consistent with agency; they are the corporeal manifestation of the abstract concept of “the army”. When someone says “The US Army made the decision to launch an attack”, they mean “The officers of the US Army made the decision to launch an attack”. If officers are punished by the army, the army is punishing itself, because the officers are, as far as the decision-making is considered, the army. This, not merely scope, is why officers are treated differently as far as war crimes are concerned, and why criminal prosecutions tend to focus on CEOs, not on all the low-level employees that actually put the fraud into practice.
Also, organizations tend to give people higher up in the hierarchy more of a vested interest in the organization. This means they have more at stake, which in turn means that when they mess up, they end up with more than a lower-level employee in an absolute sense, but less in a relative sense. For instance, an executive might be promised a bonus of up to $10 million. The executive might mess up and still get $1 million, and that looks like they’re being rewarded for screwing up because they’re getting, in an absolute sense, more money than an ordinary employee who did their job perfectly, but relatively speaking, the executive just lost 90% of their bonus. Of course, “Don’t complain about my $1 million bonus; I lost out on $9 million that I could have gotten” doesn’t tend to go over very well.
Militaries have internal conflicts and punish their senior officers. This goes not just for the army but for other branches of the military (not sure why you’re putting so much emphasis on armies).
The bonuses for the 2008 financial crisis were in many cases higher than the executives had recieved in prior years.
Officers are held accountable to a lower degree by their own army. They are held accountable to a higher degree by other armies. That is completely consistent with agency; they are the corporeal manifestation of the abstract concept of “the army”. When someone says “The US Army made the decision to launch an attack”, they mean “The officers of the US Army made the decision to launch an attack”. If officers are punished by the army, the army is punishing itself, because the officers are, as far as the decision-making is considered, the army. This, not merely scope, is why officers are treated differently as far as war crimes are concerned, and why criminal prosecutions tend to focus on CEOs, not on all the low-level employees that actually put the fraud into practice.
Also, organizations tend to give people higher up in the hierarchy more of a vested interest in the organization. This means they have more at stake, which in turn means that when they mess up, they end up with more than a lower-level employee in an absolute sense, but less in a relative sense. For instance, an executive might be promised a bonus of up to $10 million. The executive might mess up and still get $1 million, and that looks like they’re being rewarded for screwing up because they’re getting, in an absolute sense, more money than an ordinary employee who did their job perfectly, but relatively speaking, the executive just lost 90% of their bonus. Of course, “Don’t complain about my $1 million bonus; I lost out on $9 million that I could have gotten” doesn’t tend to go over very well.
Militaries have internal conflicts and punish their senior officers. This goes not just for the army but for other branches of the military (not sure why you’re putting so much emphasis on armies).
The bonuses for the 2008 financial crisis were in many cases higher than the executives had recieved in prior years.