Hugh Willmott Strength is Ignorance; Slavery is Freedom: Managing Culture in Modern Organizations was Hugh Willmott’s critique of corporate culturalism, a dominant theme in management studies in the 1980s. In 1993, when the paper appeared in the Journal of Management Studies, strengthening corporate culture was seen as a way to improve organizational performance. But instead of an academic response, Willmott used George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four to explain his objections.