The Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale: Development, validation, and associations with workplace outcomes

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. • Introduces a new individual differences measure of corporate bullshit receptivity • Distinguishes corporate bullshit receptivity from a general corporate speech affinity • Establishes a nomological network with cognitive, job, and BS-related traits • Higher receptivity is linked to lower analytic thinking and fluid intelligence. • Predicts poorer work-related judgment and decision-making