The Organization Man by William H. Whyte

The Organization Man Reviews

• 
  Ted

  I changed this to a 3 1/2 on the assumption that if I read it again (assuming I could get through it) I'd think a bit more of it than I did 53+ years ago.
  
  (originally posted 1/25/13)
  
  I read this book fifty years ago now, in the summer of '62. It was to be read before starting my freshman year in college.
  
  I don't think I got much out of it. Although I had had good marks in high school, I came from a small town in the Midwest. My classmates in college were mostly from big high schools in the east. Some of them may have been sophisticated enough to see what Whyte was talking about, or more likely just recognized their own fathers from his narrative. My dad was a school teacher in that small town, hence had nothing in common with Whyte's Organization Man; and hence I really didn't know what he was talking about, I suppose. It was a long time ago.
  
  The other thing was, one had to have something of a grown-up point of view to take in a book like this, it certainly wasn't written for kids. But when I entered college, I was a kid. I learned about grown-up outlooks, things of real interest to adults, how to be an adult in college. Kids in, adults (or, adults-on-the-way) out. That was college for me.
• 
  Terri Griffith

  I bookmooched this just to read a couple of chapters on a Chicago suburb called Park Forest. I started reading somewhere in the middle and became so engrossed that when I finished I started back at the beginning. On the surface it would appear that a book that discusses the rise of the company businessman (white men, all) would yield nothing important to my life, but instead this book gave me a glimpse into an America that I never knew first hand yet is still mythologized by the media and Republicans. Most of the sources are from the 40s and 50s. Also, as contemporary readers we know how it all turned out--how all those suburban kids of the 50s turned into the hippies of the 60s. We also see that this model of business, an employee faithful to a company for an entire career, faded away. In fact, the generation that Whyte writes about is really the only one to receive the benefits of a job like this. Some of the companies he writes about ultimately smoked their employees with retirement, downgrades, things like that. The chapter on the way suburban neighborhoods work is great.
  
• 
  Sally Duros

  The world has sure changed!
  
  Published June 2003 in WorldWIT.
  Taking the Organization out of the Man
  Sally's World, June 2003
  
  http://www.sallyduros.com/taking-the-...
  
  By SALLY DUROS
  
  There's a book I have to read. It's called The Organization Man. It was written in 1956 by William Whyte, and it's about time that I learned what the book says.
  
  When I was a girl, I held a secret deep and true, and that was that somehow even though I was female I would grow up to be an "Organization Man." My dad was an Organization Man, and my best friend's dad was an Organization Man, and the kids' next door, their dad was an Organization Man.
  
  I wasn't sure what it meant exactly - It was just a book laying around our house - but I knew my dad was one, in my simplistic view because he wore a hat, and a suit, and he went to work downtown every day. My dad would leave the house at the same time every morning. When the weather was warm he would walk to the train. You could hear the screen door slam. I would sometimes watch him exit, impressed by how fast he walked. It was a mile-and-a-half to the commuter train that took him to downtown Chicago where the train belched him out with thousands of other people, and they all walked with great intention and urgency to the gleaming revolving-glass doors of the skyscrapers where they worked, engaged in their important missions of commerce and building things and selling stuff. I knew about that because he would bring me downtown with him a couple of times a year to show me off to the other civil engineers he worked with.
  
  His route home led him like clockwork every day, up the side streets of our north side Chicago neighborhood, until he hit the end of the alley on an adjacent street. Which is when I would spy him coming around the corner, and I would run fast up the alley and jump into his arms, the dependable arms of an Organization Man dad, and he would carry me back to my mom, and siblings and the house, and it was nice and cozy like a TV sitcom.
  
  My dad brought home the scent of ink, paper and concrete, and his face felt rough at the end of the day, and I liked that. He carried a briefcase, and he often had work to do in the evening.
  
  Although I couldn't read the book The Organization Man, I knew my dad was one. Nearly all the dads I knew were Organization Men, except Mr. McHenry, and he owned his own business, and that seemed very strange and mysterious, and he was around during the day and even had a small disassembled airplane in his back yard, which was very exotic and alien.
  
  I was reminded of these childhood memories when I was chatting with Penny Pickett, Business Director for the Telecommunications Development Fund, at Springboard 2003-Midwest, the women's venture capital forum. Penny was talking about the changes she has seen in the way businesses are viewed since she had started her own business first in 1980.
  
  She started her business in 1980. When it was initially based in her home, it might solicit a condescending comment and a pat on the head. But when men headed to their garages and their basements after businesses embedding the culture of "The Organization Man" had mass layoffs during the 1980s, the conversation rose to another level. That's when the descriptive word "entrepreneur" emerged.
  
  A basic tenet of The Organization Man was the idea that an employee gave the corporation loyalty and, in turn, the corporation took care of you. Some folks referred to that disparagingly as corporate welfare. The book proposed that employees would have 20-, 30-, and 40-year careers with one corporation.
  
  When my dad started working for the organization, it had about 60 employees based in Chicago. When he left, the company had about 700 working worldwide. When the company merged with another two years ago, it had about 1200, still a small-to-medium sized business by most measures.
  
  My dad retired from the organization nearly two decades ago, with 35 years under his belt. His company merged with another one two years ago, but still the company sticks with its tradition of inviting every one who ever worked for the company to the holiday party. My dad still sees many of his colleagues from the old organization. He can thank the organization for financial stability for his family, a lifetime of friends, and work that challenged him and he enjoyed. My dad says that it was a pretty good deal.
  
  If there was a downside to being an Organization Man, it was the spiritual demand the organization made on the individual.
  
  "This book is about the organization man. If the term is vague, it is because I can think of no other way to describe the people I am talking about. They are not the workers, nor are they the white-collar people in the usual, clerk sense of the word. These people only work for The Organization. The ones I am talking about belong to it as well. They are the ones of our middle class who have left home, spiritually as well as physically, to take the vows of organization life, and it is they who are the mind and soul of our great self-perpetuating institutions."
  - From the book The Organization Man, William Whyte
  
  As painful as the evolution has been, today we are seeking a spiritual anchor in work, and this has been especially liberating for dads. Today it is as common to see dads who are self employed as dads who are working for organizations. Dads and men, in general, once a rarity after school at playgrounds, are becoming increasingly common. Whether there by choice or because of a lay-off -most of them look pretty happy to be refereeing the basketball games, manning the tube swings, testing the jungle gym and toting the backpacks of their kids. That's an experience that the organization never granted my Dad and other Dads of his generation.
  
  If the organization doesn't seem to have room for "The Organization Man" anymore, some of us have learned a new way to be in the world that means creating our own organization - even if it is only in our heads. This way of being isn't easier. But Pickett says, we are nonetheless learning new behaviors.
  
  "People today are more flexible and more entrepreneurial, even if they do go to big companies," she says. "More people are biting the bullet and learning the characteristics of entrepreneurs."
  
  This brought to mind a friend of mine who has adapted the mindset of a contract employee, even though she is a full-time employee. Pickett believes that given the choice people like my friend would elect for a more comfortable work lifestyle.
  One also shouldn't confuse the heart-sets of a small-business owner and that of an entrepreneur, Pickett says.
  
  "A capable business owner is the person who's been pink-slipped and is desperate; they need an income," she says." They haven't been able to find a job, so they start a company."
  
  "Small-business owners, we couldn't survive without them," she says. "They build good companies. They provide services that we all use. They're important to their communities. They pay their taxes. They're good people. They're just not driven the way entrepreneurs are."
  
  "The entrepreneur is somebody who tends to be pretty bright, but tends to get fairly bored," she says. "They like to learn new situations, but once they've done that they will get bored fairly quickly if it becomes routine. An entrepreneur has a real need to fix things, to improve things, to really change the world. Now money may be the thing that you keep score with, but in many ways, I don't think money is the real goal."
  
  "An entrepreneur is a do-gooder who has a strong conviction that there's something that they can do that's going to make the world better or make people's lives better or solve something that really is hurting a lot of people," Pickett says. "They'd like to make money. That's great, because in many ways, making a lot of money just gives them the cushion where they can flush out other ideas. It's a vision thing."
  
  I look at it this way, if the small-business owner is the eagle on the U.S. seal, and the entrepreneur is the cowboy on the frontier, then The Organization Man should be honored on the face of our dollar bills.
  
  Today, Dads are just as likely to be one as another, and Father's Day is the time to honor all of them. Happy Father's Day, Dad!
  
  Recommended reading for this Father's Day: The Organization Man, by William Whyte; Not Just A Living by Mark Henricks; Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity by David Whyte; and Sacred Hoops by Phil Jackson.
  The Organization Man: The Book That Defined a Generation
  Not Just A Living: The Complete Guide To Creating A Business That Gives You A Life
  Crossing the Unknown Sea
  Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior
• 
  Richard

  I read this about a dozen years ago in grad school, and I believe it is one of the seminal academic books of mid-century America. Whyte documented the radical shift in social importance that large corporations had attained along with their economic preeminence.
  
  However, the book is obsolete as anything but sociological history. The faithful organization man required a paternalistic corporation to make sense, and that pairing collapsed with the advent of deep international competition in the seventies and eighties. Today, there is no lack of scathing criticism concerning the faithlessness of the typical corporation, and wise employees have long learned to plan for the possibility of being laid off, even by a corporation that is profitable.
  
  For a more complete view of the impact the book made at the time, and on the author's later contributions, the Economist has an excellent short review of this classic
  here.
  ­
• 
  Doug Garnett

  This is a tremendous book - and I thoroughly recommend it for anyone involved in business. The lessons are as fresh and important today as they were 50-60 years ago. If you will, the "Organization Man" won out and we've forgotten Whyte's lessons about why this will be a problem.
  
  Have to say, though, the modern intro is a silly introduction. Some writer (probably well know) at Fortune tells us "nice read but we don't have these problems any more"... Yikes. I don't think he's ever lived within the world of the companies he covers. Probably talks with the c-level execs and, of course, they paint a perfect picture.
  
  William Whyte's writing is perceptive and thorough. The one serious challenge I found as a modern reader was in the first chapters where he reflects a 1950's analysis of where women can fit in a corporation - so be forewarned he observes they are "secretaries".
  
  Once past that section, his sections on testing and on genius are absolutely outstanding. Also some of the chapters on suburbs are brilliant - although I skipped through the first couple. If you read it, check the Wikipedia page on the Park Forest suburb outside Chicago where Whyte did extensive studies.
  
  The chapter "The Fight Against Genius" is brilliant and may be my favorite. And despite the Fortune editor's theory, we did NOT learn these lessons. Even the poster child Google didn't pay attention. Google's "20% allowable" for working on "whatever you want" hasn't really delivered what it intended. Whyte could predict this - he discusses a similar structure in a company in the 1950's...which also doesn't do what's intended - driving far too applied research rather than blue sky research.
  
  All in all, this book should be mandatory today. And I hate those reviews which indicate it's "just for the 1950's". My experience with massive corporate world has made it clear: Business schools didn't learn the lessons from this book that they should have.
• 
  Vasil Kolev

  It's very hard to remember through the book that it was written in the 1950s - even though a lot of stuff in the family dynamics seems old-fashioned, most of the observations on the dynamic in the corporations and the people that work in it seem spot-on.
  
  There are some great discussions on individuality, on the scientists in the corporations and academia, the group life and its consequences. Some times the book reads like an anti-utopia, sometimes it has more utopia-like tones, but in the end it's a really balanced and insightful view on the social dynamics and life in such groups.
  
  The language was a bit hard at first, but it doesn't make the book unreadable.
• 
  Bob Nichols

  The book is about a tension between individualism and group conformity. While it ebbs and flows, conformity is in Whyte's time overwhelmingly dominant – in business, academia, foundations, philanthropy, suburbia, schools and social life. Today, the difference is that the all-encompassing group ethos has merged with science. Hence, the book’s title. The goal of organizational life is the “scientific perfectibility of society” based on the “exact science of man.”
  
  In contrast to the Protestant Ethic that stresses individualism, Whyte refers to the contemporary organizational phenomenon as the Social Ethic. This is more than just conformity to group life; it is rather an all-encompassing moral imperative: the organization “man” must integrate “him"self fully into the organization. The organization in turn obliges by saying that the wholesale group integration is good, so much so that the individual cannot imagine a life without it. The beneficence is total. To be separated from the group is borderline horror.
  
  Group life provides community in the best sense, yet, Whyte presents a bleak and depressive picture of what life within in organization means. He is for “resisting.” He is for the individual taking some of his life back, though he is remarkably weak on how that might be done.
  
  Though Whyte writes of the organization man as a modern-day phenomenon, I was struck by how much it reflects universal patterns from the hunter-gatherers to moderns. Biologically, we are about protecting and providing for our self-interest. This is the basis for individualism. But we cannot do that without the group. Without the group we die so social instincts push us to merge with it. Evolution does that job for us. Now our survival and well-being is tied to group life. This is the origin of the organization man. The difference in scale and complexity is vast, but the motive force is the same: We are about our self-interest which also is tied to our overwhelming need for group life. There’s tension between the two; there always has been and there always will be. Freud’s id is inherently tied to superego and the ego struggles forever.
  
• 
  Douglas Murphy

  I'm not really sure what I was expecting from this, I had heard of the book and thought it might be sociology a la Marcuse, but it turned out to be a rambling, discursive study of corporate culture in the US of the 1950s. As you often find, there's a lot here that makes you wonder what is actually new about current times, and what is merely a rephrased perennial issue, but things that do stand out include: the concern that the America of the 1950s was becoming far too communal, far too bureaucratic… worries about the prevalence of psychometric testing in the workforce… research funding and the problems of conformity in academia, and then a long study of a particular suburban milieu, with its cliques, joiners and leaders and so on.
  
  It would, of course, be interesting to read an equivalent study of corporate people from the present day – I suspect it would conclude that an un-reflective individualism was the problem, the opposite of White's analysis from half a century ago.
• 
  Michael

  As an architect interested in US settlement patterns, I was mainly under whelmed with this one. Perhaps it's the constant references to Organization Man in seemingly every other book or journal article that has touched on the subject of suburbia. Not that it shouldn't be referenced – a couple parts were interesting - but there's the issue that most of the other authors obvious haven't read Whyte's book! I'm not going into detail as it was a while back when I spent way too much time with this, but far from critiquing the lameness of the "organization" guy (yes, most of the ladies were still housewives...or house wives again after WWII anyway) and the irresponsible separatist flight into potato fields aided by big tailfin-bedecked Chevys, Whyte approaches the suburban dwellers of mid-century in a very methodically open-minded way. Despite my admiration for this, I was mostly bored to tears (no doubt the half-century separation exacerbated my ennui) and I felt, in contrast to the umpteen hundred times I've heard how provocative and indispensable this book is for any analysis of the physical/planning issues relevant to suburban culture, that only about 1.24 chapters were of any interest at all. And I recall said chapter (6? 12?) was the one with those terrific adjacency diagrams – truly where Whyte shines...err, shone.
• 
  Isaac Velazquez

  “Hey Cheryl, did you notice that Denise stopped going to church since that whole affair thing? ... Ugh but her children are such angels, god help them” read in a New Jersey accent
  
  “I heard Claire got one of those new washing machines... ya know? with the buttons on it... I heard she got the money from some man from out of town who wears a nice fedora, thinks he's italian or somethin I dunno... you’d think she’d wait a while before moving on after Jim’s passing god rest his soul.... ya know word around town is she hired a hit man to wack him” read in a snotty gossipy whisper also in a New Jersey accent
• 
  Scuppers

  Today, students graduating go work for organizations. Whether you're an engineer, a teacher, or even a doctor, you usually join some kind of company.
  
  This book is about that phenomenon, and how in joining these organizations, people place part of the control of their lives into the hands of others.
  
  Written back when large multi-national corporations were rare. It's interesting even to read about any alternative to joining large corporations.
  
• 
  Michael David

  This book is interesting as a zeitgeist of 1950s corporate America, but is obsolete nowadays. Its chapters on The Organization Man in fiction were enjoyable, but the Organization as a surrogate father seems to be a pipe dream nowadays. Companies focus nowadays on efficiency (outsourcing is one of its methods of getting a job done), and the paternalistic Organization of yesteryear is all but extinct.
• 
  Ben

  Interesting to see how lots of stereotypes of people who work in large organizations in the 50s are similar to people who work in them now. Also surprised to see some things (like "supermom") get talked about.
  
  Also interesting to see *just how* high trust 50s suburbia was. Not just no locks on the doors, but you would just go into each other's houses. There was a quote about a section of the neighborhood full of paranoid weirdos (j/k) who would knock first.
• 
  Liz

  A little dry in places, but it got much better as it went along. It's fascinating to read Whyte's concern about unmanageable mortgages and revolving credit (in the days before credit cards) ... the more things change, etc.
• 
  Pablo María Fernández

  Como suele ocurrir con estos libros antiguos, es más valioso como testimonio de una época que por su objetivo inicial de reflexionar acerca del mundo del trabajo. Se observa una sociedad marcada por las dos guerras mundiales y el crack del 29: en un Estados Unidos pujante que necesitaba gente calificada para sus corporaciones, sólo un 5 por ciento de los universitarios aspiraba a emprender y la gran mayoría anhelaba la seguridad de entrar a una gran corporación para toda la vida.
  
  Whyte habla de una evolución: de la ética protestante individualista que fue el sello de su país (y que se refleja en el sueño americano donde con esfuerzo se llega) se estaba en plena transición a una ética social. Y dedica este libro a repasar todos los aspectos: desde la formación académica, la capacitación, la vivienda y hasta los hijos de los empleados, quienes luego sucederían a sus padres. Si bien habla sólo de su país, siendo éste faro del mundo de los negocios y de buena parte de la cultura masiva es relevante para cualquier otro -por lo menos de Occidente-.
  
  Hay partes muy lúcidas y también vigentes como su reflexión acerca del fenómeno de tomar una materia o una afición y convertirlas en carrera (hoy tenemos licenciados de lo que se nos ocurra, e hiperespecializaciones). Sorprende cuando habla de la publicidad que recién nacía como disciplina.
  
  También es rico su repaso y crítica de las investigaciones clásicas de Mayo y de Hawthorne sobre la motivación y sobre cómo se pensó racionalizar y eficientizar el trabajo usando herramientas de la ciencia. Ya en ese momento había un rebote de personas que deseaban salir del paradigma de la cadena de montaje de Ford y empezar a hacer tareas más abarcativas, alineadas a su realización personal además de económica. A partir de la generación de 1980 esto se acentuó cada vez más y se hace impensable hoy este sometimiento voluntario de los recién recibidos a las reglas de la corporación. ¿Qué opinaría Whyte de los centennials? Yo creo que estaría orgulloso.
  
  Se siente muy moderno su ataque a los test psicológicos. Hoy surgieron nuevos (Myer-Briggs y tantos otros que se usan religiosamente) pero les aplica de nuevo su escepticismo resaltando sus limitaciones. Cierra con un apéndice de cómo hacer trampa en esos tests donde da una pautas de sentido común para dar una imagen de persona promedio (alejada de los peligrosos extremos que desalientan al entrevistador).
  
  A diferencia de otros libros de ensayo no sólo es descriptivo sino que prescribe también cursos de acción y hasta da herramientas para desafiar a la corporación. No es tanto culpa de ella según él, sino de nuestra adoración, de nuestro deseo de ser parte de ella e incluso de ser uno con ella. No recurre mucho a estudios sino que va argumentando para demostrar cada punto.
  
  Hoy con virtualidad, trabajo remoto y tantas modificaciones en los casi setenta años desde la publicación de este libro estamos en otra era. Hoy se habla del management 3.0, de colaboradores que co-crean, de organigramas mucho más chatos, de células ágiles, de productos mínimos viables que luego se iteran, de carreras tradicionales desafiadas, de la gig economy y tantos otros fenómenos que vale la pena pensarlos como hizo él con los d e su tiempo.
• 
  Nathan Storring

  Whyte's cultural analysis of the American corporation is an aging classic. While incredibly influential at the time, its content and structure don't necessarily hold up to contemporary standards.
  
  There are still some great insights here, particularly about the tensions within the American ethos in general, as well as a prescient socio-spatial analysis of suburban neighborhoods near the end of the book that foreshadows Whyte's later work on public space. You can also see how his ideas, methodologies and style influenced the early work of the urbanist Jane Jacobs, particularly in his preference for observation and firsthand research, his belief in individuality and skepticism for the corporation, and his influential interpretation of the suburbs as homogenous, stifling places (though others like Herbert Gans would later challenge this assumption). However, The Organization Man can also be tedious at times, reminding a contemporary reader of the pop nonfiction of today but without the pithy brevity and candy-coated prose of a Malcolm Gladwell or Steven Johnson type.
  
  In some ways, many of the foibles and myths Whyte explores in this book can still be seen today, particularly in Silicon Valley where Whyte's longing for the rugged individual genius and concern over the emerging organization society have strangely merged into a strange hybrid. But you'll have to do a fair bit of your own archaeology to understand what The Organization Man means for America today.
• 
  dv

  Abbastanza impressionante leggere oggi, nel 2016, questo libro scritto 60 anni fa (1956). La descrizione dell'etica sociale del lavoro, che ha sostituito quella protestante e ha generato gli "uomini dell'organizzazione" è assolutamente puntuale e del tutto capace di descrivere quel che è poi accaduto. A tratti, leggendo si ha la strana sensazione che qualcosa si sia congelato nel mondo del lavoro e che siamo ancora, soprattutto dal punto di vista di nesso fra burocrazia e scientismo, a 60 anni fa. Quando poi l'autore si inoltre nel descrivere e prevedere le sorti del sistema scolastico, la sensazione si fa raggelante. In sintesi: testo fondamentale per chiunque studi il mondo del lavoro.
• 
  Du

  Will this book ever be non relevant? I would be really surprised if it were. The information is not just intetesting, but well organized and consistently written in a clear and complex manner.
• 
  Lukas Evan

  I don’t know why I’m reading all these outdated works of sociology.
• 
  Петър Стойков

  40-те и 50-те години на миналия век са знаменателни в много отношения, включително и икономическо. Голямата депресия вече е преодоляна и въпреки ВСВ икономиката бумти като тенджера под налягане. Големите корпорации излизат като основни играчи на световната икономическа сцена и създават нова корпоративна култура.
  
  Именно на тази нова корпоративна култура (вече стара, но тогава нова) е посветена книгата - на нейната униформеност, пр��небрежение към иновациите за сметка на упоритата работа, при която всеки е просто болтче в голямата машина и се очаква да посвети живота си за нея.
  
  Паралелите с държавната администрация са очевидни и много интересни. Но докато корпорациите през 60-те и 70-те се отърсват от този стагниращ начин на работа, от зависимостта си от синдикатите, от набиването на клинците на всеки инакомислещ, държавните администрации по света, поради липса на конкуренция никога не могат да направят това и остават в лапите на всички тия негативни влияния.
  
  Интересното е, че в периода точно когато старомодните корпорации които не могат да се приспособят към новото време започват да западат (виж Детройт и автомобилните му заводи), точно по същото време започва видимият упадък на социалистическите държави, в чието управление в много по-голяма степен от това на капиталистическите е заложено бюрократичното начало...