Bible Book - Handbooks - Brochures 

There's something to the comparison. All of the examples you listed share a structure: someone with authority hands you a document before you start participating in something, and the document exists to align your behavior with the group's expectations before you've had the chance to mess anything up. A company handbook exists so a new hire doesn't have to learn the rules by breaking them first. A college orientation packet exists so a freshman doesn't have to find out the hard way that a certain building requires a swipe card. In that sense, yes — religious texts often function the same way: a codified set of expectations handed down in advance, so people know the rules before they're navigating the community itself.

Where the comparison stretches a little is in the "why" behind the document. A company handbook is usually written by people who can be identified, revised, and held accountable — it changes when the company changes. Religious texts, in most traditions, are treated as claiming a different kind of authority: not "this is what our organization currently wants," but "this is what is true," often attributed to revelation rather than management decision. That's a meaningful difference even if the delivery mechanism (handed-down document, expected to be followed) looks similar on the surface.

There's also a difference in what happens if you don't follow it. Ignore the employee handbook and you might get a talking-to or eventually let go — a bounded, worldly consequence. Religious rule-following is usually tied to something with a much longer time horizon (an afterlife, karma, one's place in eternity), which changes the stakes considerably compared to workplace or campus compliance.

That said, the sociological read you're gesturing toward — that institutions of all kinds use "the document" as a tool of social control and standardization — isn't a fringe idea; it's a real thread in sociology of religion (thinkers like Weber and Durkheim both wrote about religion partly as a mechanism for social cohesion and behavioral regulation, functioning similarly to other institutional structures).