Corporate Bullshit and the Meritocracy
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Corporate bullshit does not arise despite meritocracy, but because of it—a psychological and philosophical analysis of why companies talk more and more but say less and less.
Corporate Bullshit: Why empty corporate language is more than just a stylistic issue
In 2014, a senior vice-president of the Microsoft Devices Group laid off 12,500 employees via email. The message went viral not because of the sheer number of redundancies, but because of its language. “Our device strategy must reflect Microsoft’s strategy and must be accomplished within an appropriate financial envelope”: a passage that has been cited internationally as “the worst email of all time”. No clear message. No human touch. Just buzzwords that meant nothing and yet signalled the end of employment at the company.
This phenomenon now has a scientifically recognised name: corporate bullshit. New research shows that it has far more serious consequences than companies care to admit, and that it is worth viewing it not merely as a communication problem, but as a social and political symptom.
What is corporate bullshit, and why is it more than just bad style?
Cognitive psychologist Shane Littrell from Cornell University has systematically investigated corporate bullshit; the findings were published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. His definition is precise: corporate bullshit is a specific communication style that uses abstract buzzwords in a functionally misleading way.
The key distinction here is from technical jargon. Whilst technical language excludes outsiders, it conveys real information within a group of experts. Corporate bullshit does not do this. It sounds significant, but says little. It simulates competence without possessing it. The difference is not gradual but structural: technical jargon communicates; bullshit merely presents.
For psychology, this distinction is necessary because it explains why corporate bullshit is not simply a matter of poor writing. It constitutes an active intervention in people’s cognitive orientation: with measurable consequences for performance, trust and mental health.
The organisational ecology of bullshit
Littrell’s research shows that organisations are structurally susceptible to bullshit communication. Several conditions facilitate it:
Euphemistic performance feedback replaces direct statements with vague phrasing that could mean either praise or criticism. Anyone who says “You’re not yet fully committed” does not know whether they are facing dismissal or encouragement.
Group formats that encourage ignorance produce bullshit as a social defence mechanism. Anyone in a meeting who doesn’t know the answer resorts to abstract phrasing, thereby paradoxically signalling that they belong to the group of competent individuals.
Ambitious mission statements are, as a rule – and usually by design – kept so general that they commit no one to anything. They sound like guidance, but provide none.
The desire to project confidence is perhaps the strongest driver. In companies under pressure, clarity creates vulnerability. Those who communicate precisely allow themselves to be judged by their words. Bullshit protects.
The organisation’s false self
From a psychodynamic perspective, corporate bullshit can be viewed as a collective False Self in the sense described by Donald Winnicott. Winnicott described the False Self as a protective structure that arises when the authentic experience and expression of the self are not sufficiently mirrored during early development. People learn to present a façade that meets the expectations of their environment – at the expense of contact with their own reality.
Applied to companies: corporate bullshit is the institutionalised façade. It arises where honest communication is deemed too risky: too direct, too vulnerable, too precise in admitting uncertainty. The company does not communicate what it knows, thinks or feels, but rather what it is expected to sound like.
This is not harmless. An organisation caught up in a collective ‘False Self’ gradually loses touch with its own reality. Decisions are made in a language that has little to do with the actual situation. The image the company projects of itself and the reality in which it operates drift apart.
What corporate bullshit does to employees
Littrell’s research documents a worrying correlation between the prevalence of corporate bullshit in organisations and employee performance. From a psychological perspective, this is hardly surprising once one understands how language provides cognitive orientation.
People need clear, precise communication to find their bearings in their environment. When a company’s language becomes increasingly unclear, a permanent state of cognitive ambiguity arises. The brain attempts to extract meaning where none has been encoded: a resource-intensive process that comes at the expense of other cognitive functions.
Added to this is what researchers call the erosion of trust. Corporate bullshit signals to the recipient, regardless of conscious perception, that this is not communication but a performance. Over time, this impression leads to an erosion of institutional trust, which manifests as cynicism, mental disengagement, and, ultimately, actual absenteeism. Few things in occupational psychology have such far-reaching consequences as the loss of this foundation.
Byung-Chul Han: Corporate Bullshit as a Symptom of the Meritocracy
No contemporary thinker has analysed the cultural logic from which corporate bullshit arises more incisively than the Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han. His tools for understanding this phenomenon are exceptionally precise: precisely because he does not examine corporate communication in the narrower sense, but rather the deep social structure that makes it possible in the first place.
In *The Transparency Society*, he describes how a society must express everything in positive terms: everything is to be visible, measurable, communicable. That sounds like the opposite of bullshit – and yet it is its prerequisite. For the demand for permanent visibility forces a language of positivity that no longer permits negativity: no uncertainty, no admission of limitations, no honest description of failure. Corporate bullshit is the language that emerges when positivity becomes mandatory, and clarity is risky. It is not the opposite of transparency: it is its perverse fulfilment: constant communication, zero substance.
In *Psychopolitics*, Han takes this a step further. His thesis is that power under neoliberalism no longer operates primarily through coercion, but through optimisation. The subject is no longer commanded: they are encouraged. “Yes, you can!” replaces “You must!”. This ‘smart’ power requires a language that simulates freedom whilst generating conformity. Corporate bullshit is the linguistic apparatus of this power: employees are not instructed, but ‘empowered’. They are not controlled, but ‘aligned’. They do not fail: they are ‘still learning’. The subject internalises the performance demands and regards the language used to package them as authentic.
Particularly revealing is *Müdigkeitsgesellschaft* (The Society of Fatigue). In it, he describes the exhausted subject of meritocracy: a person who is not crushed by external coercion, but breaks down under the weight of constant self-imposed pressure. The insidious thing about corporate bullshit in this context is that it renders exhaustion invisible. Anyone who has ‘not yet realised their full potential’ is not ill: they are a work in progress. Anyone who is ‘working on a personal growth process’ is not at their limit: they are on the way. The language of corporate bullshit does not pathologise; it euphemises. And it is precisely this that prevents the exhausted subject from accurately describing their own situation and thus changing it.
Finally, in *In the Swarm*, Han analyses the digital public sphere as a space where resonance replaces truth: what is shared widely is deemed true; what sounds positive is deemed good. Here, too, the structural kinship with corporate bullshit becomes apparent. Corporate news stories that go viral do so not because they are precise, but because they resonate: because they say what people want to hear. Language optimises itself for applause, not for substance.
What Han reveals, overall, is that corporate bullshit is not a flaw in the system but a feature of its logic. It arises not despite meritocracy, but through it: as a necessary linguistic form of a society that sets positivity, optimisation and visibility as its highest values and, in doing so, systematically dismantles the capacity for negative dialectics, for an honest description of reality.
A social and political phenomenon
It would be a mistake to confine corporate bullshit to the corporate context. From a societal perspective, it is a symptom of a specific form of language policy that extends far beyond corporate boundaries.
Political communication often operates according to the same rules: abstract goals that commit no one, formulations that simulate social consensus without actually creating it, and a language that does not reflect reality but manages it. This is not only politically irritating but also corrosive: social trust in institutions presupposes that their language actually communicates something.
Given this societal dimension, it is necessary to understand how corporate bullshit becomes standardised. A particular pattern emerges in German companies: German executives frequently adopt English-language buzzwords as a form of prestige without checking their meaning in the new context. The rise of ‘synergies’, ‘agile mindset’ and ‘purpose-driven leadership’ in German corporate language is not merely the adoption of technical terms but often a form of social-status performance. This, too, is a form of corporate bullshit: with a socially specific German subtext.
Bullshit as a power strategy
It would be naïve to view corporate bullshit solely as a dysfunction. It also fulfils strategic functions that are significant for maintaining power within companies.
Precise language creates accountability. Those who state clearly what they mean can be held to account. Those who communicate in bullshit evade this accountability. The level of abstraction protects against accountability.
At the same time, bullshit creates a specific asymmetry: those who can produce it with confidence signal that they belong to the management tier; those who do not understand it or complain about it risk being regarded as ‘lacking strategic thinking’. The ability to accept and reproduce bullshit unquestioningly becomes an implicit rule in some corporate cultures.
This mechanism is reminiscent of what sociologist Randall Collins has described as an interaction ritual: shared forms of expression generate emotional energy and group solidarity – even when the content is meaningless. Corporate bullshit can therefore be a highly functional mechanism for cohesion. This does not make it any less harmful; however, it explains why it is so persistent.
When does bullshit become clinically relevant?
Corporate bullshit becomes relevant to therapeutic practice when it becomes a factor in the development or perpetuation of psychological distress. Certain scenarios warrant particular attention:
Gaslighting through institutional bullshit: When a person considers their own perception of a situation to be more reliable than the official description – and frequently experiences this discrepancy – a specific form of stress arises that resembles interpersonal gaslighting. The affected individual doubts their own perception of reality because the organisational language constructs a different reality.
Burnout through cognitive overload: The constant need to translate, interpret and make sense of bullshit is exhausting. When combined with other stressors, it can become a trigger or a contributing factor in burnout.
Adjustment disorders in people with a high orientation towards authenticity: Individuals with a pronounced need for integrity – including a disproportionately high number of neurodivergent people – experience corporate bullshit as particularly dysregulating. The requirement to speak a language that does not correspond to their own experience is not, for them, an act of social adaptation, but a fundamental alienation from the self.
What clarity really means
Littrell’s research provides an important counterargument to the widespread assumption that clear communication is not practicable in complex organisations. The difference between technical language and corporate bullshit shows that complexity and clarity are not mutually exclusive. Technical language can and should be complex: it just needs actually to communicate something.
Companies that invest in clarity invest in their members’ trust. They signal: it is necessary and possible to speak directly about reality. Psychologically speaking, this is a form of respect and a necessary social prerequisite for psychological safety in the workplace.
In this sense, the 2014 Microsoft email is not merely a failure of communication. It is a document of organisational cowardice. And it has only made what it sought to conceal all the more visible.
FAQ: Corporate Bullshit and Psychology
What exactly is corporate bullshit?
Corporate bullshit refers to corporate communication that uses abstract buzzwords and vague phrasing without conveying any real information. The term has been scientifically defined and studied by cognitive psychologists, including Shane Littrell.
How does corporate bullshit differ from technical jargon?
Technical jargon communicates precisely within a group of experts and has genuine informational content. Corporate bullshit, on the other hand, merely simulates significance and serves primarily to promote itself or to avoid commitment. Understanding this distinction is necessary to contextualise the phenomenon properly.
What psychological effects does corporate bullshit have on employees?
Research findings show negative effects on performance, trust and general well-being. In the long term, bullshit communication can contribute to cynicism, inner resignation and, in extreme cases, burnout.
Why is corporate bullshit so widespread in companies?
Bullshit communication fulfils organisational functions: it protects against accountability, signals affiliation with management, and follows the social norm of prioritising confidence over clarity. This functionality explains its persistence despite known harm.
Is corporate bullshit also a social and political problem?
Yes. From a societal perspective, political communication often operates according to rules similar to those of corporate bullshit, with similarly corrosive consequences for institutional trust. In German contexts, a specific form of status performance through English management jargon is also evident.
What does psychotherapy have to do with corporate bullshit?
In therapeutic practice, the topic frequently arises as an underlying source of distress. For people who are expected to function in a bullshit-ridden work environment, naming the phenomenon is often therapeutically relieving because it validates their perception and frames their stress as understandable.
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