Hands over face, woman hides from excess of business buzzwords
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When Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that employees would be required to return to the office five days a week, he argued that in-person work would strengthen culture, collaboration, and innovation. Similar explanations have accompanied countless workplace decisions in recent years. Job cuts, pay freezes, and restructurings have routinely been packaged as opportunities for companies to become more agile, resilient, or future-ready.
Whether these explanations are sincere or strategic, they point to a growing frustration among workers that these tough-to-deliver corporate messages often bear only a passing resemblance to reality. The obvious question is: who even falls for statements that seem absurdly false or self-serving? According to new research out of Cornell University, certain characteristics mean some people are more likely to buy into the corporate nonsense than others.
The newly-developed Corporate Bulls--- Receptivity Scale measures individual differences in susceptibility to corporate bulls---, which we will refer to as “corporate nonsense” going forward. It’s important to note that being receptive to corporate nonsense is not the same as being open to general corporate speak. The difference is that the former is a deliberate attempt to manipulate others and is characterized by an indifference to the truth. It is designed to be unclear and to come across as more impressive than it actually is.
The degree to which something is characterized as nonsense is a mix of perceived profundity, degree of truthfulness, persuasiveness, and accuracy. In other words, nonsense is often in the eye of the beholder, which helps explain why some employees roll their eyes at a company announcement while others find it genuinely motivating.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, those who are open-minded and strong analytical thinkers are less susceptible to falling for corporate nonsense. Employees who are more likely to find meaning in vague corporate language are also substantially more likely to feel inspired by organizational mission statements, which are often the pinnacle of corporate nonsense. Worryingly, those who have high trust in their supervisor are also more susceptible to corporate nonsense. While building trust in the workplace is an admirable goal for a healthy culture, it’s important to keep in mind that trust can be abused.
That said, the authors note that their scale measures receptivity to corporate nonsense statements without respect to the source or delivery method. It’s a good reminder that in communications, the messenger is just as important as the message.
Some leaders may view corporate nonsense as harmless or even occasionally advantageous, and yearn for an employee base of happy sycophants, but the Cornell research shows that employees who are skeptical of corporate nonsense make better workplace decisions.
What’s more, these savvier employees may choose to leave companies where corporate nonsense is the norm, and the remaining employees may misinterpret important directives. Clear and effective communication is already difficult enough to achieve; corporate nonsense makes it harder. It also sets an example that a certain type of speech is celebrated and tolerated, encouraging employees to join in by altering their communication patterns to give a false signal of knowledge, competence, status, or authority.
Most importantly, it’s ethically irresponsible. Employees deserve honesty from the people who hold power over their livelihoods. Leaders may not always be able to deliver good news, but they have a responsibility to deliver the truth.
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