Country United States Publication date 1956 Pages 429 Originally published 1956 Page count 429 Publisher Simon & Schuster | Language English Media type Print ISBN 978-0-671-54330-3 Genre Non-fiction Subjects Business, Management | |
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The Organization Man is a bestselling book by William H. Whyte, originally published by Simon & Schuster in 1956. It is considered one of the most influential books on management ever written.
Background and influence
While employed by Fortune Magazine, Whyte did extensive interviews with the CEOs of major American corporations such as General Electric and Ford. A central tenet of the book is that average Americans subscribed to a collectivist ethic rather than to the prevailing notion of rugged individualism. A key point made was that people became convinced that organizations and groups could make better decisions than individuals, and thus serving an organization became logically preferable to advancing one's individual creativity. Whyte felt this was counterfactual and listed a number of examples of how individual work and creativity can produce better outcomes than collectivist processes. He observed that this system led to risk-averse executives who faced no consequences and could expect jobs for life as long as they made no egregious missteps.
Whyte's book led to deeper examinations of the concept of "commitment" and "loyalty" within corporations. Whyte's book matched the fictional best seller of the period, The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit (1955) by Sloan Wilson in inspiring criticism that those Americans inspired to win World War 2 returned to an empty suburban life, conformity, and the pursuit of the dollar. Marxist theorist Guy Debord discusses Whyte's observations about advanced capitalism in The Society of the Spectacle (1967).