In recent decades, it has become increasingly common for organizations to advertise their corporate cultures to the outside world, including potential job seekers. The underlying assumption is that, in the still-prevalent “war for talent”, competition for skilled workers is fierce and depicting culture as a unique selling point or distinctive employee-value proposition may convince talented individuals (who are usually spoiled with choices) to work for them.
Furthermore, psychological research suggests that when employees’ personality and values are successfully matched to the characteristics of the job and organization, including its culture, employees will tend to experience higher levels of engagement, satisfaction, and commitment, which in turn enable higher levels of performance, and without needing much in the form of “extrinsic motivation” (i.e., having their managers spend much time pushing them to perform).
Although there are no universal definitions for organizational culture, the term usually denotes the formal and informal behaviors or actions that are typically rewarded and sanctioned in a company. In simple or broad terms, culture denotes “how things are done” in an organization, particularly compared to others. Think of it as the soul or personality of a company, which encompasses the normative patterns of collective activity guiding individuals to behave in a particular way, relatively irrespective of their individual personalities and character. Just like different countries have different cultures, the same is true for organizations.
Since culture is critical for coordinating human activity (including collaboration, cooperation, and team work), there are obvious benefits to having a strong culture. Most notably, the strength of a culture can be expected to reduce ambiguity, decision-making uncertainty, dissent, and align people’s attitudes and behaviors in the pursuit of a common goal. Moreover, since people are attracted to cultures that fit their own values, strong cultures will enable like-minded people to get along, work with and for each other, and make up a synergy, all of which fuels team effectiveness and results.
That said, there is a point at which the strength of a culture ceases to be an organizational advantage, to instead become a liability. In other words, while a strong culture is generally good, excessively strong cultures can be maladaptive, eroding thinking, creativity, and diversity. It is no coincidence that culture and cult share the same root, namely the Latin colere, which stands for cultivating, inhabiting, and worshiping.
And yet, it is important to highlight some critical differences between a strong-but-healthy organizational culture and a cult-like organization:
1. Encouraging Critical Thinking vs. Demanding Blind Obedience
A strong culture values diverse perspectives, open discussions, and constructive feedback. Employees can challenge ideas without fear. A cult-like organization discourages questioning, enforces rigid ideology, and demands unquestioning loyalty to leadership.
2. Values Individuality vs. Enforces Conformity
A strong culture allows employees to turn their individual personalities, character, and values into a team and organizational asset (even if they also expect them to conform to some basic rules). A cult-like culture pressures members to adopt a singular mindset, suppress personal identity, and mindlessly conform to group norms, rejecting and repelling moderate misfits and those who stand out.
3. Flexibility vs. Rigidity
A strong culture evolves over time, adapting to changes in society, industry trends, and employee needs. It is essentially open, in the sense that it can modify its principles and mindset to evolve with environmental challenges and needs (even if some core beliefs are maintained over time). A cult-like culture is rigid and dogmatic, resisting change and forcing members to stick to outdated traditions (even if it means imposing a collective sense of reality distortion and disconnecting people from the real world).
4. Psychological Safety vs. Fear-Based Compliance
A healthy culture fosters trust and psychological safety, where employees feel comfortable expressing concerns. A cult-like organization uses guilt, shame, or punishment to enforce compliance and silence dissent, including sham agreement and conflict avoidance, which exposes the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of its culture beneath the apparent strength.
To be sure, disjointed, weak, or ambivalent cultures may be as problematic as a cult, resulting in a pathological sense of chaos, unpredictability, and anarchic individualism where cooperation and team work become an impossibility. As with everything, then, cultural strength is best in moderation, allowing organizations to navigate the delicate tension between harnessing harmonic collective activity while also allowing for a necessary and indispensable dose of dissent, individualism, and diversity to co-exist, not least if they have any aspirations to create and innovate. In the seminal words of Bruce Lee, “Obey the principles without being bound by them.”