Hugh Willmotts article, "Strength is ignorance; slavery is freedom: Managing culture in modern organizations", is a harsh critique of corporate culturisms' totalitarian attempt of 'controlling and winning the hearts and minds of their employees, in order to secure unusual efforts.'(1993 )
The article, which was published in the Journal of management studies in 1993, tests existing theories of management, and enunciates the "narrowing of values and the a-moral dimension of corporate culture". (Faifua, M. 199) It is aimed at theorists and academics, in order to stimulate discussions, and is not intended for practical use.
The article claims that corporate culturism, in its essence, is unethical manipulation of the individual by management. An instrument of control, working under disguise of freedom while defining limits which gives the appearance of individualism whilst enslaving the employees' free mind. Pushing employees toward a mode, a monoculture of assorted affinity, where the employees' are under an unconscious spell of striving to accomplish extraordinary effort in order to obtain increased corporate competitiveness. According to Faifua it theorizes "the colonisation of workers' thoughts and feelings and the governance of workers' values". (Faifua, M. 199 )
Willmott advocates the detrimental effects to employees' free will, caused by corporate culturism, and supports his claim by a preponderance of evidence. Willmott claims that "corporate culturism is the systematization and legitimizing of a mode of control that purposefully seeks to shape and regulate the practical consciousness and, arguably, unconscious strivings, of employees...To the extent that succeeds in this mission, corporate culturism becomes a medium of nascent totalitarianism,"(1993. pg. 523) an emerging system of controlled thoughts, feelings and emotions. To back up his claim Willmot introduces Meek's argument 'where parallels are drawn between the propagandist