Thanks for the references. I'll check them. I'm extremely biased against the business use of passive voice, to the point of getting so worked up when someone does it with me on mail or slack, that I need go to a quite room and relax for 5 minutes.
The purchase order has been made.
Your virtual machine has been created.
I see this a lot in corporate environments, and it's by low level managers thinking every bit of information they're trusted with is so delicate and confidential, they must go above and beyond to reveal the least possible amount of it. Note, in the examples above, it was the manager themselves doing the action. What's wrong with "I did this", "I did that"? This is LARPing as CIA agents (or whatever), and they like the sound of it (I want you to know I have information I can't share, you little shit!).
"I've just created your virtual machine" peasant
"Your virtual machine has been created" special ops elite force management
Mind you, 99.999% of the time, the concealment of "who did the thing" is totally unnecessary. It's only there to reinforce status.
"I've just created your virtual machine" - 3 year old, "mummy, mummy, /I/ did this! praise ME!". Got to insert yourself as the first thing in the sentence, as if the customer cares who did it.
"Your virtual machine is ready" - Waiter, assistant, comfortable out of the limelight to let the focus be on the customer and what they are interested in.
"I've just created your virtual machine" - You didn't make the deployment pipeline, you didn't build the hosting, or write any of the hypervisor or guest OS, you ran one script and now you're taking all the credit. Embarrassing.
Indeed. However, it is the most oft-repeated consequence of using Passive voice. In general, I use active voice and when it makes sense, passive voice is used as well.
The ususal misunderstanding that everyone repeats.
Read Williams‘, Clarity and Grace, or watch McEnerny‘s lecture on YouTube.
Passive has its use, and it‘s not "to obscure who is doing the bad thing".