The Bullshit Game: How Empty Talk Becomes Organizational Culture

In his 2025 book Bye Bye Bullshit, Dutch author and publicist Richard Engelfriet takes aim at the empty jargon and inflated claims that dominate management and policy circles. Known in the Netherlands for his sharp and satirical approach to leadership and bureaucracy, Engelfriet skewers the clichés and hollow language that have become routine: terms like “resilience,” “personal leadership,” or “value creation” that sound impressive but often mean very little. His book resonates precisely because it feels so familiar—many readers recognize the performative nature of workplace language but struggle to name or challenge it.

This is where British organizational theorist André Spicer adds analytical depth. In his 2020 academic article Playing the Bullshit Game, Spicer offers a rigorous conceptual framework for understanding how this kind of empty talk not only survives but thrives. Rather than seeing bullshit as simply a character flaw or a moral failing, Spicer proposes that bullshitting is a social practice—something people do together to manage power, perform competence, and foster a sense of belonging.

His framework echoes the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who famously introduced the concept of language games. For Wittgenstein, the meaning of a word is not fixed by definitions but by its use within a particular form of life—a social context with its own rules, goals, and conventions. Speaking a language, he argued, is not about referencing abstract truths but participating in an activity governed by shared practices. Spicer adopts this perspective, showing how bullshit is not just individual speech but a collective game, played according to tacit social rules.

Drawing on philosophers like Harry Frankfurt and G.A. Cohen, Spicer distinguishes bullshit from lies. A liar manipulates the truth knowingly, whereas a bullshitter speaks without concern for whether something is true or false. The goal is not deception per se, but effect—bullshit is crafted to impress, to align with a group, or to navigate ambiguity. Cohen adds the idea of “unclarifiable unclarity”: statements so vague they resist clarification, yet still circulate as if they carry meaning. These ideas support Spicer’s core definition of organizational bullshit: misleading and empty communication that is performative rather than epistemic.

Spicer’s critical contribution lies in showing that bullshit is not accidental or rare—it is often institutionalized. It arises most readily in what he calls speech communities: organizational environments where members speak in similar, stylized ways to signal alignment. These speech communities mirror Wittgenstein’s notion of language games: they are governed not by formal logic, but by the practical need to “get things done” within a specific social world. In these contexts, speaking the right kind of language—using phrases like “agile transformation,” “strategic alignment,” or “value unlock”—signals that one belongs and understands the game being played, regardless of whether these terms are meaningful or grounded in evidence.

Spicer identifies three conditions that make these language games fertile ground for bullshit: the presence of “conceptual entrepreneurs” who generate jargon; “noisy ignorance” in which people speak confidently about things they don’t understand; and “permissive uncertainty,” where ambiguity is tolerated and even rewarded. Together, these conditions make it easy for bullshit to spread and hard for more grounded, cautious language to take root.

Crucially, Spicer also shifts the focus to the audience. Drawing from research in cognitive psychology, he explains that most people are not very good at detecting bullshit—especially when it is delivered fluently and confidently. Processing information critically requires cognitive effort, and audiences often default to accepting statements that “sound right.” Studies have shown, for example, that people are more likely to trust a “fluent dodger”—someone who speaks persuasively but evades the question—than a speaker who gives accurate but less polished responses. Bullshit, in other words, works not just because it is spoken, but because it is received in a particular way within the game.

Once established, bullshit reinforces itself. Spicer describes a feedback loop in which successful bullshit—language that wins approval, visibility, or resources—leads to more of the same. What begins as informal improvisation becomes formalized in documents, dashboards, and policies. Eventually, these rituals become institutional dogma. In Wittgensteinian terms, the language game ossifies: terms once open to playful use are treated as sacred, untouchable rules of speech. And when those terms are finally exposed as hollow, the disillusionment can be severe.

Yet bullshit is not unbreakable. Spicer points out that when the game collapses—when language fails to match results or experience—it can provoke reflection, skepticism, even resistance. Calling out bullshit, however, is rarely easy. In Wittgenstein’s schema, every language game includes expectations about what counts as “a proper move.” Calling bullshit may violate these expectations and carry social risk. But when it succeeds, it disrupts the game’s momentum and opens space for other ways of speaking—perhaps even for truth-seeking.

To illustrate these dynamics, Spicer draws from vivid ethnographic studies. In one, offshore oil workers mimic the language of “resilience” to appease regulators, though they privately admit the term means nothing to them. In another, police officers in Copenhagen engage in outrageous and violent banter—“mean yet meaningless” talk—as a way to pass time and bond. In both cases, the language serves a purpose, but not a truthful one. It’s a game, and everyone knows how to play.

The most poignant part of Spicer’s analysis lies in what he calls the identity economy of bullshit. Participating in the language game allows individuals to appear competent, strategic, aligned—even when they are not. Over time, this can lead to a form of self-deception: people believe their own talk. Spicer calls this the “self-confidence trick.” The danger, of course, is existential. When individuals begin to suspect that their work—or even their self-image—is built on empty talk, burnout, cynicism, and alienation often follow.

Can organizations escape the bullshit game? Spicer doesn’t offer an easy solution, but he gestures toward the idea of bounded bullshitting—a pragmatic compromise in which some performative language is tolerated but constrained by internal critique and alternative discourses rooted in evidence and dialogue. In Wittgenstein’s terms, this would mean supporting multiple overlapping language games within a single organization, allowing space for more precise, substantive, or critical modes of speech to coexist with the more stylized rituals of managerial communication.

Ultimately, Playing the Bullshit Game is more than a theory of organizational dysfunction. It is a sociolinguistic diagnosis of how language becomes ritualized in contexts of ambition, anxiety, and ambiguity. Spicer’s contribution lies not only in describing how bullshit spreads, but in showing how deeply it is woven into the everyday practices of speaking and listening in professional life.

Engelfriet’s Bye Bye Bullshit shows us the absurdity. Spicer shows us the mechanism. And Wittgenstein helps us understand why, once a language game is in motion, stepping outside of it takes more than just good intentions.