Terror Management

At the intersection of psychology, anthropology, and organizational behavior lies a theory with broad implications for leadership: ‘Terror Management Theory’ (TMT).

TMT builds on the work of anthropologist Ernest Becker and his Pulitzer-winning book ‘The Denial of Death’ (1973). It argues that the heavy psychological burden created by a primal fear of mortality leads human beings to join ‘immortality systems.’ These include religions, political ideologies, and national myths, framed as permanent truths that imbue life with meaning and promise symbolic immortality through association.

In ‘A Blast From the Past’ (2006), the authors show that nostalgia, like religious beliefs, can also serve as a self-protection mechanism against mortality-related anxiety. By idealizing the past, individuals create an immortality system. This explains how nostalgia can be exploited for political mobilization.

TMT formalizes the concept of immortality systems within modern motivational theories. When mortality is made salient through illness, death of loved ones, natural disasters, or wars, individuals tend to reinforce their allegiance to their immortality system. They also become motivated to defend those systems against perceived threats. Ironically, in this potentially destructive process, the pursuit of immortality may lead to death.

From a TMT perspective, firms operate as meaning-making structures capable of satisfying the human hunger for perpetuation. While often dismissed as shallow branding or naïve idealism, corporate purposes respond to a profound need for immortality. When embedded in well-crafted stories, they help connect everyday contributions to something larger than the self, which serves as an existential motivator.

Periods of geopolitical volatility, economic transition, social instability, or cultural dislocation tend to disrupt established immortality systems, thereby uncovering the ‘terror’ of humans’ mortal predicament. Companies can respond by reasserting founding principles, mission statements, or origin myths to strengthen their identity and act as psychological anchors for their stakeholders.

Essentially, TMT suggests that firms must not only be seen as economic actors but also as fulfilling an existential mission.

TMT also helps shed light on resistance to organizational change. Strategic pivots threatening long-held beliefs can be experienced as threats to identity, leading to disengagement. In this context, executives must provide a bridge from one immortality system to the next through renewed stories or rituals. In M&A, this justifies extra care when facilitating the transition of an acquired target to its new owner.

But if firms can offer meaning, individuals are not absolved of a greater endeavor: confronting the human condition through ‘self-transcendence’, i.e., by accepting mortality instead of fleeing it.

As argued by Mr. Becker, despite one’s ‘insignificance, weakness, and death, one’s existence has meaning in some ultimate sense because it exists within an eternal and infinite scheme of things brought about and maintained to some kind of design by some creative force.’

Then, one could freely endorse immortality systems – not to escape mortality, but to enjoy a game.