The Corporate Cult

This is a great study, it takes care of a whole area I'd been addressing in the fofblog before getting banned the first time. It is an excellent piece of work that needs to be taken into consideration to understand why cults work with the same structures.

http://www.allacademic.com/one/www/research/index.php?click_key=1&PHPSESSID=df26fd364a8638396f59edd55f45a14c


The Corporate Cult
How Corporations Gain Commitment at the Expense of American Families*
Elizabeth Jefferis Terrien
University of Chicago

Abstract
Asocial milieu specific to US history has produced a situation ripe for the rise of the corporate cult.
As traditional sources of social cohesion –the family, the church, civic societies – lose their centrality
in life, the corporation becomes the central source for daily social interaction. Specific features of
corporate involvement reform workers’ commitments and priorities to the point where, despite their
best intentions, they are driven to commit more to the corporation than to any other extra-occupational
social tie. Time controls, power differentials, behavior conformity procedures, tight systems of logic,
and deployable agent programs are 5 indicators of a corporate cult environment. When they act
cohesively, the stronger these elements are in a corporate culture, the greater a worker’s emotional
involvement and time commitment to work will be. This greater commitment to work negatively
affects the availability of time and emotional commitment to their family. It is a zero-sum game for a
person’s time and emotional involvement, which are not infinite during a 24-hour day. The social
consequences of a corporate cult are akin the negative affects of traditional clinical examples of cultic
involvement: families suffer the most.
INTRODUCTION: CURRENT STATE OF US WORKER COMMITMENT
Middleclass white-collar management workers spend, on average, more hours working per week than most
workers of similar status in any other industrialized country in the world (US Department of Labor). Many of these
individuals express the desire to work less, so why do they continue to work more hours per week than anywhere
else in the world?
The detrimental effects of working more hours are well documented. Overworked individuals show signs
of mental and physical stress, and their family and friends outside of work can become emotionally strained. Often
this stress is associated with the unsuccessful integration of the individual’s responsibilities to work and non-work
social ties. The result is role conflict between being a worker and being a member of a social network outside of
work that usually encompasses their immediate family. Forced to choose between the two spheres, the worker often
reduces social and emotional ties to one of the two locations, thus suffering alienation from either work or family.
Such alienation may cause anomie: the loss of social norms and structure and meaningful life purpose. Yet, most
middleclass white-collar workers still continue to work long hours.
There have been several arguments advanced as to why white-collar workers commit to long hours.
However, many of these available theories explain longer workdays as the result of pressures on employees external
to the corporation. One is the economic argument that these workers must do so in order to financially support a
certain lifestyle. An addendum to this is that the consumer culture pushes individuals to value the accumulation of
*
Special thanks go to Barbara Schneider and the Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children and Work for their support during this research.
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commodities and is thus forced to earn enough to support their accumulation habits. Additionally, since the cost of
leisure is higher for those who earn more per hour, those who earn more will work more (Killingsworth 1993).
Another line of arguing proposes that workers are escaping from an uncomfortable family situation (Hochschild
1997).
There are also theories that refer to pressures arising from within the corporation. One argument proposes
the existence of a social contagion in some work cultures (Latane 2000), especially in the service industry. The
premium placed on face-time impels workers to spend more time at work in an effort to not be“outdone” by co-
workers. Moreover, time is the only objective measure of contribution, which further pushes workers spend more
time at work (Rebitzer et al. 1995). Finally, Brett and Stroh explain how some argue that the rewards of work are so
great that such employees simply prefer working to all else (2003).
Such theories referring to internal pressures might serve a more powerful model, if a new lens was applied
to the situation. The new lens is a sociological understanding of the cult concept. Rather than focusing on white-
collar employee pressures that are external to the corporation, e.g. escaping from the family (Hochschild) and a
consumer-culture (Schor 1991), the applied cult concept focuses on organizational-level pressures that arise from the
internal corporate culture. These internal corporate pressures embed themselves within the employees and drive
employees to work longer hours than they would prefer. If internal corporate pressure theories like social contagion
are subsumed under the cult theory, it would bolster these arguments and place them within a cohesive framework
that permits the study of them as interactive social processes. The cult concept might explain what particular
features of the US work culture drive US white-collar employees to work longer hours. Furthermore, if cultic
practices and features were applied to corporate practices and cultures, it might shed light on the processes that
transforms a “family man/woman” into a US white-collar worker.
The rest of this paper follows a four-step process. First, from a sociological perspective, historical social
events that created an environment conducive for the corporate cult are outlined. Herein the corporation is exposed
as a source of modern social cohesion, which is set against the social cohesion provided by the family unit. Second,
the existing clinical psychological conceptualization of cults is examined, and the theoretical groundwork and
terminology is explained as it relates to modern corporate processes and cultures. Third, an amalgamation of the
modern psychological clinical understanding of cult (the popular understanding aside) and the classic sociological
understanding of cult are used to produce tools for the social exploration of modern social structures in corporations.
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These tools serve as indicators and measures of the propensity for a corporate cult to thrive in a given corporate
environment. Finally, each of the 5 conditions is considered in the context of the corporation. The relationship
between existent cultic features in a corporate environment and their hypothesized consequences, the proclivity for
negative effects on the families of workers, is explored.
PART I: HISTORICAL SOCIAL ANTECEDENTS OF THE CORPORATE CULT
Modern US corporations and the modern US corporate employee were shaped by social pressures and
ideals during the industrial age. A sociological theory of the corporate cult may best be understood by looking back
on theories regarding social cohesion during this historical process. A look at this history makes it possible to
understand how corporations become the central source of social cohesion, and thus gained the predisposition to
develop into a corporate cult for so many middleclass, white-collar, management workers.
The nature and source of social cohesion was the greatest concern of eminent sociologists like Durkheim,
Weber, Simmel, and Marx. According to Durkheim, social cohesion was a main feature defining mankind apart
from mere animal.1 They all hypothesized about the future of social cohesion within the rapidly changing world
around them, characterized by capitalism, industrialism, urbanism, and globalism. They feared that the typical forms
of social cohesion like family and church and civic engagement were deteriorating. In its stead rose a society that
connected individuals by links between the specialized labor of individuals. During this 19th-20th century
industrialization, individualism surfaced as a theme of sociological fascination.
Emile Durkheim and Georg Simmel similarly describe 19th century individualism within the social
interactions of metropolitan life.2They noted the calculability of economically and personally driven individuals and
the rise of a utilitarian form of individualism. Durkheim feared that industrialization was creating an overly
individualistic culture with no constraints on individual aspiration.3 And for Durkheim, no constraints meant no
social cohesion. A lack of constraints on ego and human aspiration could lead to overtones of egoism and anomie.
Durkheim struggled to make good out of the human condition during industrialization, and he believed that the
division of labor was the only possible source of social solidarity and moral order. The individual was participating
in a large cooperative act with the rest of his fellow man, whereby modern societies developed social cohesion from
“organic solidarity” and the uniqueness of the individual is recognized within the larger organizational unit of
production. This division of labor generated interdependent participation in production that maintained a form of
social cohesion and subjected its participants to collective constraints.4
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Originally Durkheim suggested replacing traditional sources of social cohesion (e.g. family, religion,
political) with the common consciousness produced by the morality of corporate life (Durkheim 1997). He reasoned
that since the traditional social institutions of the political, familial, or even of the religious, could not prevent social
ills, like suicide, only the occupational group or the corporation could be the source of collective personality and
provide a moral environment:
Standing above its own members, [the corporate group] would have all the necessary authority to
demand indispensable sacrifices and concessions and impose order upon them. By forcing the
strongest to use their strength with moderation, by preventing the weakest from endlessly multiplying
their protests, by recalling both to the sense of their reciprocal duties and the general interest, and by
regulating production in certain cases so that it does not degenerate into a morbid fever, it would
moderate the passions by another, and permit their appeasement by assigning then limits. Thus a new
sort of moral discipline would be established…Clearly, in no other environment could this urgent law
of distributive justice be developed. (Durkheim 1951, 383)
But later, Durkheim came to believe that economic life had overreached its boundaries and had gone too far in
supplanting the role of family. Thus, he came to believe in the “cult of the individual” (a.k.a. “cult of man”).5The
individual had become “the object of a sort of religion,” because all other faiths had collapsed and the only common
consciousness was that of the individual. Society had evolved from a time where the society was everything and the
individual was nothing. Now, individual differences had multiplied due to greater complexity, volume and density,
and the division of labor. Given this situation, Durkheim twisted his ideas about the inherent dangers of
individualism into a positively charged understanding of the individual6, consequently forsaking his original idea
that the corporation can provide social solidarity in modern life. But something still resonates when reading
Durkheim’s description of the consuming social power of the economic sphere over the religious and familial
realms:
Aprofessional group would not to this extent recall to mind the family grouping unless there was
something akin about them. Indeed in one sense the corporation was heir to the family. So long as the
economy remained exclusively agricultural, it possesses in the family and in the village (which itself
is only a kind of large family) its direct organ, and it needs no other. … Since economic activity has
no repercussions outside the home, the family suffices to regulate it, thus itself serving as the
professional grouping. But this is no longer so when trades develop… Thus in this way a new form of
activity was constituted, one that went beyond the primitive family organisation. For the activity not
to remain in a state without any organisation, a new framework had to be created, one particular to it.
…Exercising a function that had first been domestic, but that could no longer remain so, it replaced
the family. (Emphasis added) (Durkheim 1997, xlv-xlvi)
Looking at the situation today, Durkheim does not seem to anticipate the pendulum swing that would create the
corporate cult, a sort of bastard version between his visions of the corporation as a source of social cohesion and that
of the “cult of the individual.”
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For Weber, a metropolis with psychological manifestations peculiar to the West emerged and became the
vehicle of financial rationalization and capitalism, which later spawned the modern corporation (Weber 1951, 13).
In his studies of the 18th century American Protestant ethic, Weber noted the emphasis on man’s uniquely defined
specialized labor as a means for pursuing his calling in the service of God (Weber 1992, 108-9). However, this
individualism was slowly transformed into something less holy,7 “The specialization of occupations leads, since it
makes the development of skill possible, to a quantitative and qualitative improvement in production, and this serves
the common good, which is identical with the good of the greatest number of people. So far, the motivation is purely
utilitarian…” (Weber 1992, 161).. AProtestant may demonstrate predestined salvation through the accumulation of
capital, which manifests itself through ascetic compulsion to save (Weber 1992, 172); but eventually the
accumulation of capital became a self-interested goal. In the end, this pursuit of wealth in the US, “stripped of its
religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions, which often actually give
it the character of sport. No one knows who will live in this iron cage of the future…” (Ibid, 182). Thusly, the
classic Protestant values spawned the modern corporate cult. A non-traditional religion was born, a religion in the
sense that it bound man to a moral order and created a common social bond. Where the family had been the bastion
of conventional religion, as the economic realm usurped the moral bonds of man, the separation of church and state
could only advance the displacement of the family and traditional religious organizations as the central source of
social cohesion.
Adeep sense of individualism remains as an important part in Americans’ self-conception. Whereas most
nations define themselves by a common history, Americans define themselves by a common ideology. In his book,
American Exceptionalism, Lipset called this ideology the “American Creed” and he described it as containing five
ideals: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez-faire. Thus, the very act of being American is
tinged with a religious belief system based on these ideals.
The American Creed ideals were embodied by the intense civic involvement central to US history. To
Tocqueville, “the initiator of the writings on American exceptionalism” (Lipset 1996, 18), civic society was the
exceptional quality of America. While Putnam later agreed, he argued that civic society started to disappear during
the 1960’s, citing the decline in the numbers of Americans in a multitude of traditional civic organizations, from
1960 to 1990, and the loosening of bonds in the most fundamental source of social capital – the family. Putnam
encapsulated the trends by writing:
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Broken down by groups, the downward trend is most marked for church-related groups, for labor
unions, for fraternal and veterans organizations, and for school-service groups. Conversely,
membership in professional associations has risen over these years, although less than might have
been predicted, given sharply rising educational and occupational levels. Essentially the same trends
are evident for both men and women in the sample. In short, the available survey evidence confirms
our earlier conclusion: American social capital in the form of civic associations has significantly
eroded over the last generation. (Emphasis added.) (Putnam 1995, 72-3)
Losing traditional sources of social cohesion creates a vacuum and provides a niche for the corporation to
fulfill a very important role for the survival of social identity in the US. Although he is doubtful of its promise,
Putnam suggests that deep involvement in corporate life perhaps has become the substitute for traditional civic
associations. Corporate life is the modern enactment of the American Creed’s ideology.
American culture today supports and carries on the concepts foreseen by Weber, Durkheim, and others, so
long ago. These sociologists recognized that individualism had become paramount through the division of labor, and
that the economic realm of our daily existence continually squeezes out all other forms of social interaction. Weber
saw that the accumulation of capital had become a self-interested goal, “stripped of its religious and ethical
meaning.” But Durkheim saw a common consciousness of a modern industrializing society based on an idea of
individualism, and he saw the corporate institution as a site of some sort of social cohesion. When the propensity of
Americans to define themselves by an ideology, embodied in Lipset’s American Creed, is added to this social
milieu, it produces a cultural concoction that sets the stage for the modern corporate cult to take hold of social
production.
PART II: SOCIOLOGICALLY REDEFINING THE EXISTING CULT CONCEPTION
While sociologists have dealt with the cult concept over the last century, any useful discussion of cult must
begin with psychologists, who have long grappled with determining what defines a cult.8 Many definitions of cult
have been closely connected to traditional models of religion, but modern clinical understandings recognize non-
religious groups as cults. These two definitional perspectives have in common two things: the high demands placed
on the individual by the cult group and the objective of molding the individual to meet the organization’s goals.
Clinical psychologists specializing in cults use the term “mind control” to describe the means by which cults do
these things.9Since this is a loaded term in our culture, it is better to understand mind control as coerced conformity.
Many have used the gentler term “thought reform”, which is achieved through influencing and controlling an
individual’s behaviors, emotions, and thoughts. The cognitive dissonance theory10 posits that if you change one of
these three in an individual – behavior or emotion or thought – then the other two tend to come into line in an
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attempt to resolve the dissonance. Hassan, a modern clinical expert on cultic practices, added the fourth component
of mind control –information (1990). Logically, the individual’s ability to think for themselves is impaired if the
information they receive is controlled.
Hereafter, thought reform will be the used to describe the phenomenon whereby an individual enters an
organization with a set of ideas that are subsequently subtly reformed, through social, psychological, and linguistic
influence, as the individual progresses through stages of continued participation. During the process, the person’s
sense of their peripheral self and central self is assaulted.11 This assault causes an adverse emotional condition
within the individual, whereby the person at some point attempts to resolve the inconsistencies between their old self
and their new coerced self.
It is difficult to discern the absence or presence of thought reform. And while it is a necessary condition, it
is not sufficient for a definition of cultic group. In fact, many theorists have focused on the desire to create an acute
list of features by which any cult can be recognized. For example, Robert Jay Lifton, the oft-cited father of
psychological study and clinical practice regarding cults, developed a definition of cult based upon 8 landmark
features: milieu control, mystical manipulation, demand for purity, confession, sacred science, loading the language,
doctrine over person, and dispensing with existence.12 So narrowly defined, this definition fails to recognize many of
the modern cult organizations.
Rather than trying to discern the cultic organization’s defining features, it might be more helpful to
recognize the conditions under which individuals will change for the good of the organization. The presence of
thought reform practices generates the conditions under which cult formations are possible. The conditions for
thought reform not only identify the social milieu in which cult formation is possible, but also the environment in
which the negative effects of induced conformity might be a future possibility or already present. The clinical cult
literature is ripe with the cases relating the various negative effects of cult involvement. The majority of these stories
involve a family member’s attempt to extract a loved one from a cult. Therefore, from the viewpoint of such cases,
the largest negative effect of cults is the social separation of the cult member from all personal ties outside of the
cult organization. Unless these external personal ties can be brought within the membership of the cult, cult
members are cut off from non-cult family and friends. This separation process is rarely overt. Usually it is
accomplished through functional practice, by making the person very busy with cult business and delicately framing
their non-cult ties as less important than their commitments to the organizational goals.
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This is a process that is not so far from what is happening to US white-collar workers today in a workplace
culture that could be termed the “corporate cult”. If it is possible that these processes are present within
corporations, how could it have slipped under the radar of organizational theorists? The answer requires a
sociological theory of the corporate cult.
PART III: THE TOOLS FOR THE MODERN SOCIOLOGICAL CULT MODEL
Sociological theories about cults explain that new social forms often arise through a syncretism of beliefs
and practices that take the place of the old religious traditions within a given society.13 Cults were thought to arise
two ways: a cult group could form around a charismatic leader to produce a charismatic cult, or a “parallelism of
spontaneities” could produce a spontaneous cult. Like a spontaneous cult, the corporate cult has arisen
simultaneously throughout our society, due to the institutionalization of certain corporate practices, and it has
provided a new source of social cohesion. Social cohesion is present when a particular society possesses common
interests and perspectives, i.e. similar values, goals, beliefs, and actions. The new corporate source of social
cohesion has been replacing the traditional sources of family, religion, and state; and it is replete with its own
common consciousness and moral life. It is lacking traditional religious belief in the supernatural, but it is a social
system that guides one’s values, goals, beliefs, and actions.
Unlike prior sociological theories about cults, the cult model proposed herein is not defined by its
amorphous structure or by its highly pyramidal structure. It is not defined by its adherence to religious meaning or
mysticism, or by its social deviance or marginality.14 This cult model is recognized by certain conditions present
within a social milieu; and the social milieu has been constructed and enacted with the specific aim to develop
reforms in thought amongst a targeted group of people, reforms which are meant to enhance the goals of the larger
social group, regardless of the individual’s personal interests, and thus are capable of creating negative
consequences for these individuals and their social ties external to that social milieu.
This theory of cult does not assert that corporate leaders knowingly engage in cultic practices; but it does
suggest that in their efforts to meet the economic goals of their market organization, they shape individuals into the
best workforce for the job, and in doing so create a corporate cult environment for their employees. Several aspects
of today’s workplace mimic cult-producing conditions and create cognitive dissonance within individuals by
manipulating their emotions, behaviors, thoughts, and information. Such workplace environments and practices can
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produce the same detrimental effects in employees as would occur within the victims of what are popularly
understood to be cults. What are these aspects?
PART IV: TESTING THE HYPOTHESIS
Clinical cult psychologist, Dr. Margaret Singer, described a set of specific conditions that necessary for
thought reform to be capable of producing the negative consequences associated with cults. The following corporate
conditions will be examined below: 1) time controls; 2) power differentials; 3) behavior conformity procedures 4)
tight systems of logic; and 5) deployable agent programs (Singer 2003). These 5 conditions provide the basis of our
independent variable set for identifying the possible presence of cult consequences.
The production of the corporate cult environment and the consequences of imposing such conditions
become apparent when examining the interactions between the spheres of family and work. When the
family/workplace interactions produce evidence of negative consequences, it provides an indication of a cult milieu
presence within the corporation. Such corporations can then be examined for the presence of the 5 conditions for
thought reform. Consequently, the remainder of the paper will examine management-level, white-collar workers in
corporations in an effort to uncover evidence of these 5 conditions.15
The workplace is socially engineered to advance the economic goals of the corporation. The 5 conditions
provide a useful framework for re-envisioning the US corporation as a breeding ground for the cult mindset. The
ubiquity of certain organizational features in workplaces across the US elucidates how they contain conditions that
might produce a cult environment in which thought reform is likely.
1. Time Controls
The subject of increasing time commitment might be in danger of overexposure in academic literature and
in popular media these days. The number of books on the subject in sociology regarding families’ struggles to regain
control over their lives is astounding.16 Companies have a large lease on their workers’ time. Many timesaving
devices have become time-intrusive devices: fax machines, cell phones, pagers, email, and voicemail. More mobility
has created global business and home offices. However, compensated travel means you are traveling on company
time. And home offices open the door to company domination of the domicile. Discretionary time is now company
time.
Companies have a vested interest in demanding as much of an employee’s time as they possibly can.
White-collar exempt (salaried or non-hourly) employees are particularly vulnerable. Since they are not paid by the
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hour, there rarely exists a clear-cut agreement between employee and employer about what exact amount of time
fulfills the work contract. Thus, employees rely upon signaling from employers and co-workers. This system of
uncertainty operates to the employer’s favor, as the worker tends to work more rather than fewer hours in efforts to
err on the side of overcompensating to protect their job status. For white-collar workers, their time is the company
time, as much as the company can get of it. If an employee wants to be one of the team, they have to put in the time.
At Hochschild’s Amerco, autonomous work teams, enriched jobs, and less obvious hierarchical structure were
emphasized. A common vision of company goals was pushed. In an attempt to engineer and create a shared culture
of new values and practices, a questionnaire was disseminated to Amerco workers. While the questionnaire asked
what workers thought, it at the same time, through specific language, implied and basically told workers what they
should think. Even the Amerco handbook spelled out unwritten norms, like “time spent on the job is an indication of
commitment. Work more hours.” Given the relative absence of job security today, a new white-collar worker will
invest more time to prove his or her worth and necessity for the company’s success. Thus begins the reciprocal
arrangement between the employee giving their time and the company taking their time. (Hochschild 1997, 18-20)
Even if an employee wants to scale back on their commitment to the workplace, they are often unable to do
so. Becker and Moen studied middleclass couples who attempted to employ time management strategies. However,
in the end, the pull of occupational demands seemed deeply embedded.
[Becker and Moen] found in these interviews an unquestioning primacy of paid work. When we asked
people about their ideal careers, they did not usually mention their family. But when we asked about
their ideal families, most people mentioned their work spontaneously. The career that people in our
sample envision is the consuming career of the high-powered professional – long hours spent at
something seen as demanding and rewarding with linear advancement and domestic life arranged
around its demand for mobility. (Becker and Moen 1999, 1003)
Solving the problem of encroaching work demands fallen on private families rather than in public companies.
“[Becker and Moen’s] study suggests that privatization has become widely institutionalized among middle-class
dual-earner couples. Rather than challenging established social hierarchies, privatization is rooted in them” (1999,
1005).
2. Power Differentials
Workers often feel powerless against the large organizational system most commonly found in global
corporations, but which are also present in many smaller companies. Corporations essentially require the efficiency
provided by bureaucracy; and within this framework, “[power] is characterlogical issues but a social structural
issue” (Kanter 1993, 172). Employees often have the responsibility to complete certain tasks, but rarely do they have
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the ability to change the circumstances under which they are expected to perform. Consequently, they are left to feel
victimized by a social construction that is telling them they should be able to succeed under such circumstances.
The hierarchical structure of a company makes the personal nature of some of the relationships nested
within the workplace strange. Many companies have become flatter in the organizational structure, which makes
many of these relationships more natural. However, despite the appearance of being on equal ground with co-
workers, out of a necessity to direct the enterprise, there is still an elite group at the top who maintains control and
absolute authority over the workforce. This status structure is somewhat hidden if personal attachment intrudes on
traditionally hierarchical work relationships. If the reality is that work is where people spend the majority of their
time, and that it is where the majority of their social group resides, and that it is the source of their very livelihood,
then this inherently puts workers in a cult-producing environment.
3. Behavior Conformity Procedures
There is no more overt form of behavior conformity than the employee handbook. A quick look at any
employee handbook will give the rules to control any employee along with the sanctions for breaking those rules.
For example, common items under company control are attendance, attire requirements, computer use and e-mail,
drugs and alcohol, smoking, termination, hours/overtime, breaks, vacation, holiday, personal time off, sick leave,
sick days, and lunch periods, just to name a few.
Rather than formal employee manuals, informal pressures are often more important factors contributing to
time and emotional commitment levels. Since employees find themselves away from the extra-occupational support
of friends and family, they have no choice but to bend to organizational social pressure and conform. For a
newcomer, the sense of being an outsider is increased by the use of in-group terminology or technical lingo.
Lexicons are common in most companies and separate the deserving insiders from the outsiders (Maanen and Barley
1984). Kanter describes how wives of Indsco employees could name over 103 words in the “comvoc”, the terse
language system promoted by the company to save time (Kanter 1993, 40). Furthermore, insiders possess common
stories and typical gossip topics. Since co-workers could be instrumental in determining a new employee’s success
at the company, there is a strong desire to conform and become part of the in-crowd. As Kanter described,
“Managers at Insco had to look the part” (Ibid, 47), and this part was informally understood.
The manipulation of rewards and punishments are built into most employee manuals, but there are so many
unwritten tools. There are social, intellectual, emotional, and monetary methods for doling out rewards and
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punishments. A demotion could encompass all four of these tools, making it a very powerful strategy for corporate
control of the employee.
The administrative human resources departments that merely processed payroll and health plan benefits 50
years ago has transformed into a hands-on department, responsible for managing employee morale through
establishing employee programs, counseling, and reward/punishment mechanisms. Employers even control an
employee’s physical workspace and personal appearance, as well. Elsbach’s recent article on the subject of
workplace environment control explored how a drastic change in workspace – from personal workspace to rotational
workspaces – caused extreme emotional responses. Removing an employee’s ability to lay claim on particular
physical workspaces attacked their sense of self because it removed all possibility of creating a personalized space.
If an individual attempted to install personalized identifiers in certain locations, there were sanctions for these non-
conformist acts. On the flip side, there are usually great rewards for employee commitment to company-ideals, from
plaques to public accolades to cash rewards. An entire literature addresses the different ways in which companies
may reward employees in order to obtain desired behavior. These measures help control employees’ behaviors,
thoughts, and emotions in a corporate cult environment.
4. Tight Systems of Logic
Atightly controlled system of logic is the series of justifications, stories, and rhetoric circulated throughout
the corporation that makes it possible for employees to support the organization’s actions. Given the status of
corporations within our society, and their ability to bestow status and wealth and self-confidence, it is better to
belong to a company than to not belong. As Americans, we are encouraged to buy into the existing logic offered to
us by large corporations. The logic of some older organizations has been crafted into an independent identity over
time. Many of the largest companies have taken on an identity of their own, separate from that of their appointed
leaders. Companies like Google or McKinsey openly recruit certain types of people into their organization.
Companies like Campbell Soup or Playboy Enterprises promote a certain image with particular values. Companies
spend a great deal of money, time, and effort on polishing their internal and external company image. This is
emphasized by the massive amounts of budgeting spent on marketing and public relations departments. An
employee entering this type of organization is attracted by a branded corporate entity, replete with a corporate
culture, a certain history, and certain values and goals. The corporation becomes a symbol for the ideals preached by
the corporate leaders. A mission statement often encapsulates the public goals of a company, and the corporate
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culture is usually engineered to support this mission statement. A system of logic is constructed to justify the means
towards the end goals of that the mission statement.
The insular social structure of the corporation maintains the system of logic for its members. This insular
social structure is often created through the use of rhetoric espousing an “us versus them” mentality, creating a
stronger corporate identity and greater identification with the corporate group. This mindset not only creates a
distinction between the workers and those immediately outside of their company, it can also be a distinction between
US workers and foreign workers. Such a mindset became prominent when US workers starting losing their jobs to
overseas competition. In fact, some larger companies were able to convince their employees to take massive benefits
cuts by threatening their employees with the prospect of sending their jobs overseas to cheaper labor. While these
cuts caused great hardship to the workers’ families, to remain part of the team, they were willing participants.
(Hochschild 1997)
Recall that according to the theory of cognitive dissonance, if one of these four items – behavior or emotion
or thought or information (remember Hassan added the fourth) – are at odds with the other three, then these other
three will tend to come into line in an attempt to resolve the dissonance. Mission statements and employee
handbooks and training methods disseminate a great deal of information to employees, which are designed to
manage employees towards meeting the corporation’s economic goals. Sometimes the behavior demanded by the
corporation is at odds with the thoughts or emotions of its employees. A tight system of logic is required to
encourage employees to follow company directives and prevent them from voicing concern, disobeying, or exiting
the corporation. The ever-growing 24-7 service economy is increasing the demand for corporate commitment. In
Hochschild’s The Managed Heart, atight system of logic is in place to manage the emotions of flight attendants,
regardless of how unnatural it may feel for these employees to do so (2003). The airline industry is in currently in
difficult financial times, which makes workers even more vulnerable to the demands of corporation.
The inertia of existing work and social programs within any such a company are so powerful that most
employees would believe it futile to attempt change within such a system. Older employees, who have tried and
failed to change the system, serve as a role model to younger potential change masters. The stronger the
indoctrination, the stronger the system of logic perpetuated by the company and its insular social structure. The
closer the insular social structure, the more difficult it becomes for an employee to envision life outside of the firm.
It is common for US workers to find most of their friends at work. With the decline of participation in non-
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employment activities, US workers are more and more dependent upon their jobs for any sense of belonging.17 This
personal connection with the workplace makes it more difficult to leave without a sense of guilt. Workers who
seriously question the system of logic set forth by the leaders of a company risk all of the comfort provided by its
corporate home away from home. The company group acts as if it is a safe caring place by attempting to attend to all
the needs of its employees; companies create instant villages, establishing a “culture of outsourced care”
(Hochschild 1997, xxiv). With in-house fitness centers, dry-cleaning, cafeterias, and more, the worker never has a
chance to leave the insular environment to create and maintain extra-occupational ties. The corporation strives to
give every reason for the employee to like it. Corporations become more like a cult the more they pretended to care
about their employees for reasons other than economic.
5. Deployable Agent Programs
Singer describes a thought reform process in which individuals are unaware that they are being moved
through a program to make the deployable agents of the cult organization. This is the central aspect defining popular
conceptions of cults. However, in the corporate cult described herein, this aspect is given no more power than any of
the five aforementioned conditions.
To be a “deployable agent” of a company, one merely needs to be able to carry out the actions set forth for
reaching the mission of the organization without direct supervision. She monitors herself, she her peers, and she is
monitored by peers. The service economy requires people to fill jobs that cannot be constantly monitored due to the
responsibilities away from the office, at all hours, and essentially out of a direct manager’s oversight, e.g. sales
people, field workers, service technicians, various types of consultants, etc. In order for the corporation to make
money and prevent shirking, they must appropriately train their employee as deployable agents. For example, in the
annual Recurrent Training class for flight attendants, the instructor explains what she does when she encounters an
“irate”, a customer who insults or yells at her or treats her rudely. “I pretend something traumatic has happened in
their lives. … Now when I meet an irate I think of that man. If you think about the other person and why they’re so
upset, you’ve taken attention off of yourself and your own frustration. And you won’t feel so angry.” (Hochschild
2003, 25) Flight attendants must be taught how to interact with customers when no one is around to observe them.
Sales persons are managed with quotas and incentives to compel commitment to the company goals, whether or not
the employees are on corporate property (Walker et. al. 1975). All of this is to keep the employee committed to
achieving the corporation’s goals.
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Adeployable agent is subject to the rewards and sanctions of the organization. He accepts the goals and
values of that organization, at least enough to do its bidding. The more deeply embedded the individual is within the
organization, the more detached from external reality checks he becomes. The deployable agent is ready to
participate in company activities, accepts and conforms to company policy, and displays some willingness if not
enthusiasm for tackling company projects. Hochschild observed that at Amerco, when foreign competition required
new corporate strategies for survival, “Under Total Quality at Amerco, the worker is not a machine he’s a believer”
(1997, 206). Events rallied workers into believing that they were part of something bigger: “to think up good ideas,
to concentrate harder, to be more careful, to cooperate with the coworkers on your team – these were, he suggested,
patriotic as well as pro-labor acts” (Ibid, 207). The workers were invited to leave behind their individual fates
behind and try, like an executive, to envision and care about and plan for the fate of the company. This particular
plant where the rally was occurring was threatened with being closed due to global competition. Workers were
asked to sacrifice themselves for the good of the factory to keep it open. The company created a feeling of caring for
the worker and adopted a more personal orientation toward work time. While many companies talk about valuing
independent thought and personal individuality, they do not let it interfere with corporate missions. In fact,
companies seem to only espouse the values of liberating individualism, a strong American ideal, during the
recruitment of desirable individuals. Once inside, individualism is confined to the desires of the firm.
The deployable agent is created by a strong system of indoctrination. When a person joins a company, they
buy into the company. Regardless of how company goals and initiatives change, that employee is along for the ride,
no matter where it takes her, because the cost of exiting is so high. Thus, many employees have no real way of
knowing exactly what they are in for when they join a new company. In most circumstances, not even non-
disclosure agreements grant job candidates carte blanche to the inner workings of the company. The company is not
transparent until they are already hired, and even then the corporate environment might not be readily transparent.
Given the general acceptance of corporate activities in the US and the relative ignorance of a new recruit, it
is no wonder that an indoctrination program for new hires slips under the radar unlabeled as a “thought reform
system.” There is little coercion required, as new employee programs are considered an acceptable form of
socialization. And so thought reformation occurs rather painlessly for most of us when we enter a new job. During
the new hire process, new hires learn what it takes to be part of the social group on which their future will depend.
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They learn the full content of the company ideology. They begin to learn what resources the company really wants
from them. For white-collar managers, it is often their time that is desired.
The result of total indoctrination is the gradual weakening of external ties and the relinquishing of
commitment to external responsibility. The successful indoctrination of the employee’s emotions, thoughts,
information, or actions, creates dissonance between the work self and the non-work self. This must be resolved. If
the person has a deep, pre-existing, extra-occupational social network, it will invariably conflict with the
responsibilities of the work role. The continual attempt to abolish the dissonance and to balance the responsibilities
and associated emotions, thoughts, and actions creates an untenable situation that forces one of the two roles to take
aback seat to the other. Since the home is dependent upon the income provided by work, out of necessity the work
role takes priority. The corporate cult mindset takes hold and the individual resigns its time to the organization’s
bidding, despite their external commitments.

PART V: A LOOK TO THE GLOBAL FUTURE
The above demonstrated how thought reform can be the used to subtly reform an individual’s ideas through
social, psychological, and linguistic influence, as the individual progresses through stages of continued participation.
This assault causes an adverse emotional condition within the individual, cognitive dissonance, whereby the person
at some point attempts to resolve the inconsistencies between their old self and their new coerced self. This is only
possible when all five of the above discussed features are present: 1) time controls; 2) power differentials; 3)
behavior conformity procedures 4) tight systems of logic; and 5) deployable agent programs. When these conditions
are within a social milieu that has been constructed and enacted with the specific aim to develop reforms in thought
amongst a targeted group of people, reforms which are meant to enhance the goals of the larger social group,
regardless of the individual’s personal interests, corporate cult environment is likely to be present. As shown, such
an environment is capable of creating negative consequences for their employees and their social ties external to that
social milieu.
Unlike the typical Marxist arguments that squarely place blame on the upper classes for all the strains felt
by those of the lower classes, the above cult model sees the exploitation of workers as the result of a total societal
phenomenon, not simply a class phenomenon, whereby individuals are caught up in a mindset that leads them to
believe that they are acting on their own behalf and with their best interest at heart.18 Even those in the higher
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echelons of the status structure, top management in addition to middle management, are subject to the negative
consequences of the corporate cult environment. In other words, the enemy remains unidentified and elusive. As a
strictly macro-level sui generis social phenomenon, the institutionalization of corporate practices and worker actions
further solidifies the corporate cult and encourages the cultural reproduction of its deleterious effects on society as a
whole.
This paper has gravitated towards answering three questions. First, how did these 5 conditions become
institutionalized in US corporations, and what are the mechanisms by which they were constructed and then socially
reproduced? Second, could it be that the result of such institutionalism was a cultural feedback loop between the
workplace and the family, which currently attempts to subvert the social structure in the US by relegating the family
to a secondary unit status and raising the workplace to a primary unit status? And third, what are the effects on the
individual’s social ties outside of the corporate environment, i.e. their family? The peculiar history of the US and its
ideology institutionalized the current conditions in corporate cultures. It also constructed the need for the
corporation to fill a central role above and beyond that which the family could fulfill. Given the institutionalized
nature of our corporate culture in the US, the effect of the relationship between the two social spheres seems to be
the ultimate subversion of the family to the service of the corporation. The second-place status of the family
produces conflict for the worker, which negatively affects their extra-occupational ties.
The long term goal of this research is to test the hypothesis that this corporate cult is being exported to
other counties via global corporations where it will similarly reorganize the hierarchy of commitment between work
and family. At first glance, few would see a similarity between a large global corporation and the publicized cults
like Jonestown. Most companies would never be relegated to that kind of deviant status in our capitalist,
individualist, egalitarian society. Current events have demonstrated, individuals become the scapegoat for any
corporate trespasses, and the corporation continues on its previous course by making some symbolic changes
through rebranding efforts. Unchecked, the values within global corporations spread across the global economy, thus
affecting the work/family dynamic across the globe with its diffusion of corporate cult values. The current state of
institutionalized corporate culture is destined towards social reproduction and pervasive global replication.