When does "cult" emerge in the phrase "organizational culture"? Where is the boundary between a healthy company and one that resembles a sect? And how to recognize that this boundary has been crossed?
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Organizational culture is a seemingly neutral term with a clear positive connotation. According to the definition, it gives a group of unrelated individuals a common identity and a binder in the form of values and norms that they should follow on the way to achieving goals and successes. However, something that in assumptions constitutes the foundations of a healthy organization, is increasingly turning into a toxic caricature of itself. Examples in contemporary corporate culture are not hard to find.
Just look at the American Big Tech sector, which like no other is based on the cult of human genius, innovation and the vision of improving the world. Within Silicon Valley, the embodiment of these ideas are often charismatic leaders like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Adam Neumann or Steve Jobs, who in the narratives of their own companies grow to the rank of religious gurus preaching a new gospel. And their employees take on the roles of faithful followers in this relationship.
This is especially visible in the case of Apple, where adoration for the deceased founder and products with the logo of a bitten apple is literally written into the company's DNA. This phenomenon was widely described in 2012 by journalist David Segal in a report that appeared in The New York Times.
– Apple's success is based on a set of intangible factors. The most important of them is a loyal fan base, which ensures a steady flow of candidates willing to work, and an organizational culture that strives to transform every task into a mission. [...] The idea is to instill in employees the belief that they are doing something much more noble than just selling or repairing products. Apple understands that many people will give up higher pay if they get a sense of fulfilling a higher purpose in return – Segal wrote.
The cult of the organization manifested itself somewhat differently in the startup WeWork, founded by Adam Neumann, which by the way is currently on the verge of bankruptcy. The company's vision assumed a complete transformation of workplaces into modern spaces, being a melting pot of creativity and innovation. Offices equipped with numerous amenities, such as pool tables, game and play corners, and kitchens with prosecco machines, were supposed to encourage employees to integrate constantly. What's worse, Neumann himself clearly encouraged this, convinced that companies should become communities where you spend your entire life.
An even more extreme example of blurring the boundaries between private and professional life was Zappos, an online platform for trading clothing and footwear. Its founder Tony Hsieh from the very beginning did not hide very well in interviews the fact that in practice he cared not about the company, but about the "cult". His recruitment interviews, which he was supposed to conduct in party buses or bars, were famous, because he assumed that he did not want to work with people he could not go out for a drink with. Parties and the desert rave atmosphere known from the popular Silicon Valley festival Burning Man were the main leitmotif of Hsieh's activities. British journalist Aimee Groth wrote about this in the book The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia.
– Zappos is different from most companies. Here, employees receive rewards for partying with the CEO. I have also never heard of a case where someone from Hsieh's inner circle would face consequences for outrageous or distasteful behavior during parties. Such events only unite his tribe – recalls Groth.
The author also describes the Zappos headquarters known as The Downtown Project, located since 2012 in a renovated shopping center in the suburbs of Las Vegas. According to Groth, the headquarters resembled more a "startup town" and a "Disneyland for entrepreneurs and company employees" organized on the principle of "3C" – connectedness, co-learning and collisions, understood as accidental meetings. It was these last ones that constituted the essence of the Zappos community and were unofficially considered mandatory.
– You worked eight hours (or more), and then you went home and met with colleagues for an improvised cooking session or bar tours. There was no "off" button. Home was work, and work was home. You could give up all social contacts, but that would make others start wondering how dedicated you are to your work – writes Groth.
Ultimately, Tony Hsieh's social experiment led to tragedy. Three people most involved in the public promotion of The Downtown Project, Jody Sherman, Ovik Banerjee and Matt Berman, committed suicides at the turn of 2013-14, just a few months after the start of the project. Hsieh himself actively silenced these matters and never addressed them publicly. He resigned from his position in September 2014, and in 2020 he died under still unclear circumstances at the age of only 46.
Although the cases described above definitely belong to the extremes, they clearly illustrate the most important features of organizations where a cult prevails. This can appear not only in international corporations employing hundreds of people, but also in smaller companies and startups. How to recognize its symptoms?
– What characterizes a corporate cult is the degree of control over the thinking and behavior of employees. Just as religious cults are based on the aspirational mission of their leaders, corporate cults focus on the principles, regulations, and culture of the organization – believes Damon Baker, entrepreneur and CEO of Lean Focus, a consulting firm that deals with positive business transformation.
Baker lists five basic signs of a corporate cult. These are opposition to individualism and manifestations of independent thinking, isolating, punishing and "canceling" employees who dared to leave, expecting dogmatic dedication to the company and the system, requiring absolute loyalty and lack of respect for the boundaries of private and professional life. Linguist Amanda Montell in her book Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism adds two more points to the mentioned five: blind cult of the leader and specialized terminology emphasizing the distinctiveness of the organization from the rest of society and striving for higher goals.
In short, as Tessa West, a professor of psychology at New York University, emphasizes, all the above features of toxic organizations are contained in the phrase that "the company is like a family".
– When a company is presented in this way, its employees may feel unhealthy pressure to show an unjustified degree of loyalty, endure long working hours, poor treatment and the disappearance of boundaries between professional and private life. And all this in the spirit of harmony and a sense of striving for a common goal – writes Prof. West in her book Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them.
She also adds that toxic companies often tend to isolate their employees from the environment.
– The family may be reluctant towards outsiders, especially when it comes to class, racial or sexual differences – this pattern often appears at work as well. The family implies a certain degree of similarity, good cultural fit. In other words, if the company expects employees to treat it this way, then you should look for another job – adds West.
So what to do not to become one of the followers of corporate religion and not to join the "toxic family" of your own free will? It's best to start with a simple internet query. Popular forums gathering opinions of former employees provide an initial insight into the company's internal politics, as well as its website and social media. Comments under posts and entries in closed employee groups can be a treasure trove of knowledge about the relationships prevailing within a given organization.
Damon Baker from Lean Focus also encourages careful tracking of media reports and checking whether a given company is not involved in legal proceedings or has not become the subject of journalistic investigations (like Amazon, for example). The entrepreneur also encourages, if possible, direct conversations with customers, suppliers and partners of the company, and ultimately – even with the competition.
– Most industries are small, and former employees of one company are often hired by the competition. Certainly, some of these people may be reluctant to reveal their experiences to a stranger, but if you sense fear in them about speaking freely about the company, you may have just received your answer – claims Baker.
In the case of managers suspecting that their company shows signs of being a cult-based organization, a simple test mentioned by business consultant and academic lecturer Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries in an article for Harvard Business Review is enough. In his opinion, you should ask yourself: do employees believe in the company's vision because they understand and agree with it, or because it is expected of them? Does the company encourage employees to cultivate private life? And most importantly, does it encourage individuality and nonconformity? If the answers are mostly negative, it is a sign that the company is most likely a cult-based organization.
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