• alienation
• applied philosophy
• corporate culture
• exploitation of the desire for self-realization
• Foucauldian dispositif
• new spirit of capitalism
• reification
• social philosophy

In this research the management tool of corporate culture is reconceived according to the concept of “dispositif” elaborated by Michel Foucault, that is, as a complex of techniques, knowledge and objects capable of producing subjectivity. The paper aims to introduce the voice of philosophy into the debate on corporate culture, which has so far been dominated by managers, organizational scholars and sociologists of labor. The contribution made consists of an ethical-normative analysis of the premises and consequences of corporate culture on the workers. The first part provides the definition of corporate culture and explains how it works, emphasizing the role of social norms and the purpose of coordination. In the second part the premises of philosophy of mind and philosophical anthropology are laid out to propose an embodied, embedded, dense conception of the individual. In the third part, the evolution of the tool of corporate culture is historically contextualized, tracing the economic-organizational transformations of the 20th century and the change in the “spirit of capitalism” that accompanied them. Here the centrality of corporate culture to the prevailing economic order is explained by the metaphor of the keystone. The fourth part discusses some of the harmful conditions for workers generated by corporate culture, such as (self-)reification and alienation, manipulation and exploitation of the desire for self-realization. In conclusion, reflection on the subjugating capacity of corporate culture leads to rethinking the idea of freedom.