I’ve encountered a senior manager who described her organisation’s culture as “toxic,” “unsustainable,” and “fundamentally broken” — and then, in the very next sentence, said she “couldn’t imagine working anywhere else.” How does this work?
She was exhibiting something we could call ‘corporate Stockholm syndrome’: the gradual process by which people begin to identify with, defend, and even love the very systems that diminish them.
The original Stockholm syndrome describes hostages developing an attachment to their captors. The organisational variant is subtler but structurally similar. Over time, people in dysfunctional environments begin to normalise the dysfunction.
Unreasonable workloads become “just how it is here.” Poor-quality leadership and decision-making become “high standards.” The absence of boundaries becomes “commitment.” The vocabulary shifts until the pathological sounds aspirational.
Upton Sinclair, the American troublemaker journalist captured the underlying mechanism with characteristic precision:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
But it goes beyond salary.
Identity becomes entangled with the organisation. To criticise the system is to criticise yourself for remaining in it.
And so, unconsciously, you stop criticising. You start explaining. You become the organisation’s most eloquent defender — not because it deserves defence, but because the alternative is confronting your own complicity in staying.
What makes this particularly insidious is that it looks like loyalty from the inside. And organisations reward it as such. The person who absorbs dysfunction without complaint is promoted as “resilient.” The person who names it is labelled “not a cultural fit.” The incentive structure reinforces the syndrome.
Breaking free requires what the psychotherapist might call an ego-dystonic moment — a flash of recognition that the way you are living is not consistent with who you understand yourself to be. These moments are uncomfortable. They are also the beginning of recovery.
So…
Listen to the people who have left. Former colleagues who departed the organisation often see it with a clarity that those inside cannot access. If multiple people who’ve left describe the culture in terms you find yourself reflexively defending, pause and consider whether your defence is reasoned or reflexive.
Test your narrative with an outsider. Describe your working life to a trusted friend outside your industry. Watch their face. If they look horrified by things you describe casually, your baseline has shifted more than you realise.
Notice the language of normalisation. When you hear yourself saying “that’s just how it is” or “every organisation has its issues,” ask whether you are contextualising or anaesthetising. There is a meaningful difference between mature acceptance and the surrender of standards you once held dear.