https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/23/corporate-speak-study
"Ever sat in a meeting where someone declares that your company is
“growth-hacking” and “working at the intersection of cross-collateralization
and blue-sky thinking” and called bullshit? Turns out you were right.
A new study out of Cornell University published in the journal
Personality and
Individual Differences found workers most excited and impressed by corporate
speak may be the least equipped to make effective, practical business
decisions, and it can leave companies with dysfunctional leaders.
Academically, “bullshit” is broadly defined as “a type of semantically,
logically or epistemically dubious information that is misleadingly impressive,
important, informative or otherwise engaging”, according to the study.
“Corporate bullshit” is a specific type of bullshit that uses puzzling
corporate buzzwords and jargon and is ultimately “semantically empty and often
confusing”, according to the research. It is often used by management to
persuade and impress, sometimes to inflate perceptions of the company to
workers and investors.
“There’s a lot of useful things about the way people in a certain company speak
to each other. But it becomes problematic when that turns into nonsense that’s
used for misleading purposes,” Shane Littrell, a postdoctoral researcher and
cognitive psychologist at Cornell University who authored the study, said.
“It’s the people that can’t tell the difference that seem to have the most
problems.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
