Inner work life – The psychology of “we”

What happens when organisations stop sounding like institutions and begin speaking as though they are people?

Read many corporate messages today and you will hear the same familiar voice. We believe. We are proud. Our story. We care. The language feels natural now, almost invisible, but it has not always been this way.

A century ago, organisations largely spoke the language of contracts, production and efficiency. Work was described in terms of duties, output, hierarchy and exchange. Elton Mayo’s work helped shift attention towards the human side of organisations, reminding managers that people are not machines and that relationships, morale and belonging matter. From there, ideas of corporate culture, mission and shared purpose became increasingly central to organisational life.

By the 1990s, organisations were no longer managing behaviour alone. They were also shaping identity. Mats Alvesson describes this as identity regulation: the subtle process through which organisations influence not just what people do, but how they come to understand who they are at work.

Language is central to that process. It does not simply describe reality; it helps create it. Norman Fairclough’s work on discourse reminds us that words shape relationships, identities and power. A small pronoun like we can quietly transform a contractual relationship into one that feels personal, emotional and mutual.

Sometimes this is meaningful. Shared purpose can inspire people. Belonging matters. Work can offer structure, connection, pride and a sense of contribution. For many people, the language of we reflects something real: a team, a community, a collective effort that feels worth being part of.

But the same language also raises a psychological question. If organisations increasingly speak like people, do we begin to relate to them as though they are people? Do we invest in them emotionally, trust them relationally, and experience their decisions not only as business events, but as personal ruptures?

This matters most when the relationship changes. When restructures happen. When redundancy arrives. When the warm language of we gives way to a colder phrase: the company has decided. At that moment, the person-like organisation can suddenly become distant, abstract and unavailable. The relationship that once felt mutual is revealed to have limits.

Perhaps the question is not whether organisations should use the word we. Human beings need meaning, and workplaces cannot function without some sense of shared life. The question is whether we fully appreciate the psychological relationship that word invites us to have.

When an organisation says we, it is doing more than communicating a message. It is asking people to step into an identity, a belonging and a story. That can be powerful. It can also be painful. The inner life of work begins in precisely that space: between the institution and the person, between contract and attachment, between what is said and what is felt.

Sources: Elton Mayo, The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization; Mats Alvesson, The Triumph of Emptiness and work on identity regulation; Blake Ashforth, Beth Schinoff and Shelley Brickson, Academy of Management Review (2018) on organisational anthropomorphism; Norman Fairclough, Language and Power.