Extreme Organizational Identification: Evidence from a Modern Day Corporate Cult

Abstract

After observing modern organizations experiment with spirituality and organizational culture, we revisit corporate cultism nearly 20 years after its initial conceptualization. We argue that strong and high-performing organizational cultures risk transforming into corporate cults without strong ethical standards, and propose a mixed-methods research approach to explore corporate cultism in a modern organization. In our qualitative study, we examine how many characteristics of destructive cults the observed organization exhibits. We summarize interviews with five middle managers from a single organization and conclude that 12 out of 14 characteristics of destructive cults are present in the studied organization. This suggests that occult behaviors can manifest themselves within a high-performing multinational company with a strong organizational culture, strong market brand and numerous international employer excellence certifications. By surveying 304 employees within the observed organization in our quantitative study, we test the empirical model of transformational leadership, organizational identification, and employee engagement within a corporate cult. Results indicate that the positive effects of transformational leadership on employee engagement are partially mediated by organizational identification. We conclude with theoretical and practical implications of corporate cultism as a salient ethical dimension of modern leadership.