If you were to do an internet search, you'd find mostly positive statements about the benefits of corporate culture.  Then again, if you were to look for a book about the evils of communism published in China, Cuba, or Venezuela — you'd come up empty-handed.

There's also the term "corporate socialism."  Enlightened management knows what is best for the workers — including what they do after work.  After all, everybody belongs to a team.  It is all about team work. 

I once attended a trade association meeting where a representative from a company located in Berkeley addressed the attendees and bragged about how his company cared so much for its workers.  Not only were they not allowed to smoke at work, but they couldn't do it at home, either.

I also happened to have a deep business relationship with another Berkeley company.  My company instituted an individual productivity bonus program as a way to encourage greater worker efficiency.  There was a significant administrative cost in the accounting of each worker's production, but worker morale and company profit were both significantly improved.  Our people loved getting that extra check every month.  The Berkeley associate was so impressed that his company adopted a similar program...except that it awarded team bonuses, and the results were unimpressive.  This is a serious example of why socialism doesn't work.  It also reveals the corporate culture of Berkeley, California.

Just a hint at a key to success in such endeavors: I use the typical Las Vegas casino as a reference.  When someone hits a jackpot on a slot machine and starts shrieking with joy, the other players start playing harder and faster.  We rigged the bonus system to make sure the goals were well within reach.  We wanted to see winners.  Only trainees were likely to come up short...and if they failed to make the grade after the six-month probation period, they were let go.  Thus, the bonus system was also a yardstick by which we could measure new hires.

In case you haven't noticed, government at all levels is also totally mired in its own corporate culture.  To me, the most obvious evidence is the aversion to actual problem-solving.  To both bureaucrats and elected clones, problem-solving success is measured only by the amount of money thrown down the appropriate rat hole.  The news media follow on with this fiction due to their sympathetic corporate culture.  Hence, public-sector problems persist, even though enormous amounts of money are being spent.  In practice, this is not an unintended consequence — persistent problems are the mother's milk of political careers.  If problems got solved, we wouldn't need to keep these slugs on the taxpayer's payroll. 

Since boardrooms, bureaucracies, and politicians are particularly vulnerable to fads, other aspects of corporate culture involve such things as the hysterical reaction to fallacious threats to (ahem) climate stability, forcing ridiculous (unlegislated) mandates for electric vehicles, solar panels, propeller beanies, and the like.  "Diversity" and "inclusion" have also risen to the top of the agenda.  Forget ability and the monetary value of a worker's time, and just allow appropriate discrimination.  As long as the right people are getting screwed, it's OK.  Orwell would blush.  

Topping off this rush toward absurdity, California just joined a few other states in suing "Big Oil" for changing the Earth's weather and lying about it.  Should the state win, although that is highly unlikely, the only result will be another increase in the price at the pump.  Watching a government entity that operates with a serious financial deficit squander borrowed resources to chase rainbows is truly breathtaking.

Corporate culture is nothing new, and it may not really be all that bad.  It is a manifestation of human nature — the desire to fit in and be part of a larger group.  There's an old saying: there's the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way.  What is lacking is a general awareness of the effects of its pervasive influence and the possibility for serious negative consequences.  Feedback and evolution come to mind as ways functional defects in corporate culture can be improved upon.

There is also the other side to this coin.  "Thinking outside the box" is still considered a compliment — at least by some.  The box is the confinement of groupthink (AKA corporate culture).  Brings to mind some guy named Trump.  Yeah, he's got some rough edges...but he's no corporate clone.  And the quest continues for more folks with the same "outside the box" mindset, and perhaps with a less disturbing demeanor.  There are several possibilities waiting in the wings — who will emerge this cycle only either as vice president or in the event Trump takes a pass.

But the die has been cast.  Americans are fed up with politics by cliché — the usual race-baiting, climate-scaring, gender confusion junk.  They want problem-solving that works.  Period.

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