Employees who embrace ‘corporate bullshit’ make worse decisions
Posted 4th June 2026 • Written by Rob Moss on personneltoday.com • • • • • •
People who readily adopt vague corporate-speak such as ‘synergistic leadership’ and ‘growth-hacking paradigms’ are significantly worse at making effective workplace decisions.
Research from Cornell University found that employees who are impressed by impressive-sounding sentences like, “We will actualise a renewed level of cradle-to-grave credentialing”, rated their managers as more charismatic, even “visionary”.
However, these people also recorded lower scores for analytic thinking and cognitive reflection, and scored significantly worse on a test of effective workplace decision-making.
As part of his research, cognitive psychologist Shane Littrell created the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale (CBSR), a tool designed to measure people’s susceptibility to impressive-but-empty organisational rhetoric.
“Corporate bullshit is a specific style of communication that uses confusing, abstract buzzwords in a functionally misleading way,” said Littrell. “Unlike technical jargon, which can sometimes make office communication a little easier, corporate bullshit confuses rather than clarifies. It may sound impressive, but it is semantically empty.”
Wondering whether it might actually be harmful to organisations, Littrell created a “corporate bullshit generator” which churned out sentences such as: “By getting our friends in the tent with our best practices, we will pressure-test a renewed level of adaptive coherence.”
He then asked more than 1,000 office workers to rate how “business savvy” these computer-generated bullshit statements were, alongside real quotes from Fortune 500 leaders.
His study, published in the Personality and Individual Differences journal, found that the CBRS was statistically reliable. Then, using established cognitive tests, Littrell made connections between the workers’ receptiveness to corporate bullshit, and their analytical thinking skills known to be key to strong workplace performance.
The research also found that being more receptive to corporate bullshit was also positively linked to job satisfaction and feeling inspired by company mission statements. Furthermore, those who were more likely to “fall for” corporate bullshit were also more likely to spread it.
‘Appropriate financial envelope’
When corporate bullshits gets called out, real reputational can occur, Littrell said. For instance, a leaked 2009 Pepsi marketing presentation with language such as “The Pepsi DNA finds its origin in the dynamic of perimeter oscillations… our proposition is the establishment of a gravitational pull to shift from a transactional experience to an invitational expression…” led to widespread ridicule in media.
And in 2014, a memo from the former executive vice president of Microsoft Devices Group to employees, later dubbed in the press as “the worst email ever,” opened with 10 paragraphs of corporate bullshit. It included: “Our device strategy must reflect Microsoft’s strategy and must be accomplished within an appropriate financial envelope.” The real news was buried in the eleventh paragraph – that 12,500 employees were going to be made redundant.
Littrell found that employees most excited and inspired by “visionary” corporate jargon may be the least equipped to make effective, practical business decisions for their organisation.
“This creates a concerning cycle,” Littrell said. “Employees who are more likely to fall for corporate bullshit may help elevate the types of dysfunctional leaders who are more likely to use it, creating a sort of negative feedback loop. Rather than a ‘rising tide lifting all boats’, a higher level of corporate BS in an organisation acts more like a clogged toilet of inefficiency.”
The findings suggest that while “synergising cross-collateralisation” might sound impressive in a boardroom, this functionally misleading language can create an information blindfold in corporate cultures that can expose companies to reputational and financial harm.
“Most of us, in the right situation, can get taken in by language that sounds sophisticated but isn’t,” Littrell said.
“That’s why, whether you’re an employee or a consumer, it’s worth slowing down when you run into organisational messaging of any kind – leaders’ statements, public reports, ads – and ask yourself, ‘What, exactly, is the claim? Does it actually make sense?’ Because when a message leans heavily on buzzwords and jargon, it’s often a red flag that you’re being steered by rhetoric instead of reality.”
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