People Prone to Corporate Bullshit Tend to Make Worse Leaders

When empty buzzwords signal poor judgment

Photo by Charles Forerunner on Unsplash

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People who fall for buzzword-laden corporate waffle tend to be worse leaders and poorer decision-makers. Receptivity to “corporate bullshit” is linked to lower analytic thinking (first graph below) and worse judgment in workplace contexts (second graph).

1. Corporate Bullshit and Analytical Thinking

Bivariate correlations between Corporate Bullshit Receptivity and analytic thinking style variables. A heat plot displaying Pearson’s correlation coefficients (larger, top number) and p-values (smaller, bottom number) for the associations between Corporate Bullshit Receptivity and analytic thinking style variables. Source: Littrell (2026).

2. Corporate Bullshit and Workplace Judgement

Bivariate correlations between Corporate Bullshit Receptivity and job-related variables. A heat plot displaying Pearson’s correlation coefficients (larger, top number) and p-values (smaller, bottom number) for the associations between Corporate Bullshit Receptivity and each job-related variable. Source: Littrell (2026).

The graphs come from a fascinating recent paper by Shane Littrell. Here’s the abstract:

From boardrooms and brown bags to emails and earnings calls, business culture often seems overrun by “corporate bullshit,” a semantically empty and often confusing style of communication in organizational contexts that leverages abstruse corporate buzzwords and jargon in a functionally misleading way. At best, corporate bullshit can sometimes seem harmless. At worst, it can disrupt organizational and employee effectiveness in numerous ways including obstructing clear communication, increasing employee disengagement, tarnishing a company’s reputation, and exposing businesses to potential financial and legal risks. Here, results from four studies (total N = 1018) report the construction and validation of the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale (CBSR), a novel measure of individual differences in susceptibility to corporate bullshit. Results show that corporate bullshit receptivity is distinct from a general affinity for corporate speech, negatively associated with measures of analytic thinking, and positively related with other bullshit-related constructs in theoretically-consistent ways. Importantly, corporate bullshit receptivity is positively associated with several workplace perception variables and is a robust negative predictor of work-related decision-making. Overall, the findings establish the CBSR as a valid and reliable tool to aid researchers and practitioners in examining the causes, correlates, and consequences of receptivity to bullshit in organizations.

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You can access the paper here or download a free version here.

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