Businesses are perpetually trying to define themselves. Or, more precisely, businesspeople at the highest levels are perpetually trying to explain to businesspeople at the lower levels why their company is special and deserves their loyalty despite low salaries, abysmal benefits, and the firing of anyone who mispronounces the CEO's name. Pinning down what the company stands for is critical. Employees may not be convinced, but what would executives do all day if there weren't vision statements and strategy sessions and corporate town hall meetings? They'd have to play even more golf -- and that couldn't be good for their backs!

I remember chortling a couple of decades ago when the idea of "corporate culture" came into vogue. Organizations began to be looked at as tribes with their own rituals, mores, and customs. It was common to hear someone (usually an executive) say indignantly, "That's not part of our culture here at ZanTechCo!" when referring to something he disapproved of, something such as an attempt by the tribe to unionize.

Lately, it seems, "corporate culture" has gone the way of Nehru jackets; it's been replaced by the more modern term "corporate DNA." You might hear someone say, "Innovative, outside-the-box thinking is part of our corporate DNA." They tend to say that just before you spew your coffee. But I think "corporate DNA" is more than just a flash in the pan of vocabular evolution. Not only is the term more fashionable than its predecessors, it's also more scientific, and businesses are always striving to be scientific. Managers like to believe they're just one equation short of kicking the competition's butt.

They also think conveying an aura of scientific rigor inspires confidence. My favorite example of this is a company that sells supplies for diabetics. On its TV commercials, a coot you may know as Wilford Brimley extols the virtues of the company, introducing two technicians whose technical ability appears to be limited to answering the phone. So far as I can tell, this company is a marketing and mailing operation. But in the commercials, the technicians are wearing white lab coats, as if they spend their time formulating new batches of insulin when they're not asking for your credit card number.

The less scientific businesspeople are, the more they want to portray themselves as scientific. A guy from a lawn-mowing outfit showed up at my door recently offering me a free "flora assessment and remediation diagnosis," which would presumably assess that my lawn needed his specially formulated bovine effluent in order to grow faster. The woman who cuts my hair announced last month that she wanted to apply a solution formulated from highly concentrated doses of Icelandic moss to the dorsal region of my scalp. And the stuff I use to clean my barbecue grill is marketed as "an advanced scientific formulation." Clearly it has been brought to me only through the tireless efforts of genius barbecue scientists.

I'm thinking I should wear a white lab coat everywhere I go. It would lend me an air of authority and win me respect. Wouldn't you have more confidence in me if you thought I was more than just a writer? It's not stretching the truth to say I'm a verbal technician developing new strains of participles under strict laboratory conditions. Well, maybe it is, but just a little bit.

Like me, the people who have good enough posture and golf swings to become CEOs see great value in a linguistic tool that makes them seem smarter than the average employee. The thing I like most about their use of the term "corporate DNA" is that it suggests that changing the direction of a company is on par with gene splicing in terms of its intellectual demands. By using the term, managers are raising the expectations of their abilities. Are they opening a can of worms? And is the can of worms part of a flora assessment? If so, I think the remediation diagnosis must involve bovine effluent.

Dan Danbom writes humor for a number of publications. His latest book is "Humor Meets Your Workforce: Make Laughter One of Your Organization's Goals."