Cultic Studies Journal, Volume 17, 2000, Page 127
Corporate Cults: The Insidious Lure of the All-Consuming Organization.
Dave Arnott, New York: American Management Association, 2000. ISBN: 0-1844-
0493-6
This is a thought-provoking book. Unfortunately the main thought it provokes is: how could
such a bad book have ever found a publisher?
CSJ readers might be ‗lured‘ towards it by the importance of the subject matter. Over the
past decade pressures on managers and workers have intensified in virtually all
organizations, and in most countries. Desperately ferreting around for innovative
approaches to improve performance, many managers have latched onto the notion of
corporate culture, possessed by a belief in its transformative powers. They have been
encouraged to regard themselves as messianic leaders, charged with bringing vision,
meaning and the mindset of True Believers to their organizations. It is no longer enough to
manufacture burgers. You must also actually believe that they Mean Something. One of the
best-known players in this area, Tom Peters, approvingly cites the founder of McDonald‘s as
saying: ‗You gotta see the beauty in a hamburger bun.‘
In a typical sign of the times, just after reading this book, I picked up another tome entitled
‗Corporate Religion.‘ The dust jacket informs us that ‗management has to unite the
organization around a strong idea, a shared vision, and then manage accordingly. That
makes tough demands. In the company of the future there will only be space for believers.
Dissenters must look elsewhere.‘ Sounds familiar? The book goes on to provide tips for the
creation of a corporate religion, suggesting that employees be screened for ‗attitude‘, in
order to eliminate dissenters from the search process.
It is this phenomenon that Arnott, a management professor at Dallas Baptist University,
rightly has in his sights. Sadly, his sights are out of alignment, and the bullets fired turn out
to be mostly blanks.
Problems begin with the shrieking dust jacket. A be-suited male, his head shaven and
emblazoned with both satanic insignia and the book‘s title, glares out at the reader. Is he
meant to symbolize an irresistible corporate leader, seeking new recruits? I detected the
imminent approach of an empty argument, lightly disguised behind the cheap make up of
tawdry sensationalism.
Arnott sets out his stall in the first chapter, by discussing the nature of corporate culture
and the defining characteristics of a cult. This is an excellent point of departure. However,
the definition offered of a cult revolves mostly around a textual analysis of the old Eagles
song, Hotel California. (I am not making this up). We are then told that cults have three
traits: devotion, charismatic leadership and separation from community. True, so far as it
goes. However, much more is needed, to establish the concept of cultism in the minds of
potential readers, few of whom would have much familiarity with the burgeoning literature
on the topic. Regrettably, there is every sign in this book that Arnott shares their ignorance.
Chapter One proceeds to elucidate a dominant argument in the book – that there is a
difference between who you are as a person and what you do. You mean more than your
work. Corporate cults seek to blur this distinction, and lure people into an obsessional
devotion to their workplace.
There is clearly some truth in this. A balanced life requires satisfaction in work, harder to
achieve now than ever, and a fulfilling home and community life. However, I am less
persuaded by the argument that we can simply assume a complete disconnection between
who people are and what they do. If Arnott can make his point by citing research from The
Eagles I am tempted to venture into similar territory. A recent CD by a British rock group
features a photograph of an obese youth on its cover. He is wearing a tee-short adorned
with the slogan: ‗I‘m number one, so why try harder?‘ The point seems to be that how you

Cultic Studies Journal, Volume 17, 2000, Page 128
feel about yourself over-rides everything else: so what if your life is meaningless, you do
nothing worthwhile, and your health is endangered? However, I don‘t buy the often well-
intentioned distinction between the inner essence of a person and their behavior. (A good
topic for a song?) One could imagine Hitler using precisely such a defense had he reached
the Nuremberg trials. ‗Hey, I‘m a nice guy too. Pity about the concentration camps, but that
was only what I did, not who I am.‘
Arnott propounds the distinction throughout this book, evidently intending to promote a
humanistic ethos in the workplace. I believe that his approach leads in the opposite
direction. There is no intrinsic reason why work should be alienating, with people compelled
to seek all personal satisfaction outside the hours of nine to five and away from where they
earn their living. Yet this is the logical conclusion to Arnott‘s analysis. His message is that
we should fulfill all our personal needs elsewhere. Anything which improves our affinity for
work can be seen as just another attempt by the all-powerful organization to lure you into
its belief system. And, indeed, Arnott seems to regard attempts to improve the quality of
working life (child-care, gym facilities, evenings out with colleagues, health plans) in
precisely this light. He doesn‘t seem to notice that such benevolence is generally absent
from the behavior of most documented cult leaders. Where, for example, were the gym
facilities, expensive holidays and opulent meals in Jonestown?
A side effect of such an approach is that most organizations can be characterized as
corporate cults, thereby devaluing the analytic worth of the term through indiscriminate
usage. If most everything is a cult, the term carries no special explanatory power, and our
analysis would have to move to a new level.
Corporate Cults is crammed with poorly thought out concepts and wild generalizations. Hard
data has mostly gone walkabout. The problem is epitomized by Chapter Two. Starting from
the assumption that people born in particular periods are likely to share common
psychological characteristics (where is the evidence?), the author divides the population
born since the depression period into five categories. Arnott seems to assume that those
allocated to these essentially arbitrary categories share some kind of distinctive essence
with each other. Thus we read that ‗Baby Boomers were encouraged to be free thinkers, to
not trust the organizational establishment‘ (p.22). Presumably, free thinkers and dissenters
did not exist in earlier periods, while everyone born after 1945 smokes dope, opposed the
Vietnam war and is contemplating the formation of a new Marxist sect. Other chapters make
increasingly convoluted attempts to relate this approach to the recruiting habits of modern
corporations, particularly those that might be deemed cults. Sadly, the elasticity of the
concept, and its inadequate empirical presentation, thwarts the attempt, which collapses at
each new hurdle. It is hard to run without legs.
However, even a rotten omelet can sometimes contain one good egg. Thus, Chapter Nine in
this book offers useful pointers for future research. Corporate cultism is clearly an important
issue. All types of organization can become cults – including businesses. (It is notable that
one of the best-known business organizations to cause concern, Amway, doesn‘t even rate a
mention here). Arnott proposes at this point a Work Relationship Survey, designed to
measure devotion, the charisma levels of perceived leaders and the extent of separation
from the community. It is a commonplace in the field of cultic studies that there is a dearth
of valid and reliable instruments with which to measure these processes. Despite the recent
development of the Group Psychological Abuse scale there are still few good instruments
with which to conduct research.
Arnott‘s survey is adapted from three other questionnaires, which have been well validated
and are clearly referenced in the academic literature. He has selected those items which
pertain to the three domains he argues most characterize corporate cultism, and integrated
them into a 20-point inventory. Unfortunately, he provides no information to justify his