Reification: When 'The Company' Decides Instead of Us
- Claudia Salas Bozich
- Feb 21
- 5 min read
Abstract language dilutes responsibility
The classic phrase:
"It's a corporate decision to let you go."
But behind those painful words, there were three people in a meeting room.
They have names: John, Mark and Alice. They had very specific reasons and a pretty difficult conversation. One of them even voted against it. But all of that disappears when it becomes "a corporate decision."
Ah, the "corporation." That comfortable refuge that lightens our guilt and helps us sleep more peacefully at night.
Allow me to introduce what sociology calls reification.
What is reification?
The term reification comes from the Latin res (thing) and literally means "to turn into a thing." The concept was developed by Georg Lukács and later refined by sociologists such as Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann.
Reification is the process by which social constructions created by humans come to be perceived as objective, natural, and immutable facts. It's forgetting that we ourselves are the creators of the rules of the game, and starting to believe that "this is just how things are," inevitably. Basically, giving life to an abstraction.
In the organizational context, reification occurs when decisions made by people get attributed to "the organization," and processes designed by someone become "the system."
Why do we reify?
Reification serves important psychological and social functions:
1. Emotional protection
Firing someone by saying "I decided to let you go" requires assuming a brutal emotional weight. "The company decided" creates a psychological distance that protects us from that discomfort.
2. Complexity reduction
Modern organizations are complex systems. Explaining that "the Executive Committee, made up of five people, voted 3-2 in favor of this measure after reviewing Q3 financial data" is exhausting. "The company decided" is simply easier.
3. Maintaining authority
Invoking impersonal forces (like "policy requires it") reinforces a perception of inevitability and reduces resistance. It's harder to argue against "the system" than against Juan from the second floor.
4. Diffusion of responsibility
When something goes wrong, saying it was "a corporate decision" disperses the blame. There's no clear person to point to. This ambiguity protects individuals but weakens organizational learning.
5. Legitimizing the established order
Presenting structures as "objective" or "natural" makes them harder to question. "This is how the company works" closes conversations that "this is how we decided it would work" would keep open.
A reification repertoire: everyday examples
"The system won't let me give you the raise."
Reality: Your boss didn't prioritize your raise in the budget that he or his superior approved.
"The company has decided to let you go."
Reality: Three specific people, with names, voted for your dismissal.
"That's company policy."
Reality: Someone wrote that policy five years ago and nobody has reviewed it since.
"It's not within my scope."
Reality: Your boss, or your boss's boss, defined your scope this way and could redefine it.
"Those are orders from above."
Reality: María on the 7th floor made this decision last Tuesday in a 45-minute meeting.
"The process requires five approvals."
Reality: Three years ago, a committee designed this process to mitigate a problem that no longer exists.
"The platform doesn't allow that functionality."
Reality: The IT team hasn't prioritized developing that functionality, or nobody has asked for it.
"The organization is going in a different direction."
Reality: The strategic committee decided to pivot toward the B2B market after reviewing sales data.
"The market demands we work this way."
Reality: Competitors made specific decisions; we chose to imitate them instead of differentiating ourselves.
The dangers of organizational reification
Erosion of accountability
When decisions are attributed to abstract entities, there's no one to be held accountable. This makes collective learning harder, preventing the correction of mistakes. It also frustrates the people who genuinely want to understand what happened.
Generation of frustration
Constant reification can teach employees that their actions don't matter because "the system" controls everything. This produces dissatisfaction, loss of initiative and creativity, and the classic "not my problem" culture.
Dehumanization of work relationships
When "the company" makes decisions instead of people, interpersonal trust gets damaged and employees become "resources" rather than human beings.
Perpetuation of injustice
Reification hides patterns of inequity under neutral language: "the evaluation system" that systematically penalizes certain groups, "market dynamics" that justify pay gaps, "job requirements" that replicate historical biases.
How to de-reify: practices for more awakened organizations
Pause and recognize. When you catch yourself using reified language, stop. Ask yourself: who actually made this decision? Am I part of that "we"?
Own your authorship. If you were part of the decision, speak in first person.
Ask for the specific. When you receive a reification, ask: who specifically made that decision?
Transparency in decision-making. Document who decided what and why, creating accessible records of important decisions. Communicate not just WHAT was decided, but WHO decided it.
Clear appeal structures. If we can know who decided, we can also question the decision or request reconsideration.
Language of accountability. Train leaders to use first person in difficult decisions and embrace the emotional discomfort that comes with it.
The paradox of reification
Here's a key fact: a certain level of reification is inevitable and functional.
It's not realistic to name every person behind every decision all the time. That would be exhausting and impractical. Cognitive shortcuts have real value.
The key isn't to eliminate reification entirely, but to develop awareness about when, how, and why we use it.
Reifying is fine for routine, low-impact communications, technical documentation that requires neutrality, processes genuinely co-created by many people, and situations where the identity of the decision-maker is irrelevant.
Reifying becomes problematic in decisions that affect lives (layoffs, role changes), situations that require accountability, when it's used to avoid difficult conversations, and when it blocks legitimate questioning.
The organizational awakening
An awakened organization isn't one that never reifies. It's one that recognizes when it's reifying, consciously chooses whether it's appropriate or not, assumes responsibility when it should, maintains open channels for questioning the established order, and constantly remembers that structures were created by humans and can be changed by humans.
Because awakening begins with something that sounds simple but is profoundly transformative: putting a name and a face to decisions.
Final reflection: recovering agency
Reification steals something fundamental from us as people: the sense that our actions actually matter.
When "the system" decides everything, when "the organization" has a life of its own, when "that's just how things are," we lose sight of an essential truth: it's us.
We are the ones who create policies, and through our interactions we perpetuate or transform cultures. We are the ones making the decisions.
Recovering that awareness isn't about judging others. It's an act of empowerment toward ourselves. And, as if by magic, when we recognize ourselves within those structures, we become capable of changing them.
If you want to give your culture a more conscious push, discover the services and workshops available for your company.
Claudia Salas Bozich
