A little over a week ago, a book you've probably never heard of celebrated its 50th anniversary. Published in 1956, William H. Whyte's The Organizational Man described the rise of the "for the company" culture of large organizations that rewarded workers for their loyalty and continued employment. This book was barely even noticed when it was published, and I doubt that many of us have read it today, but its anniversary was still significant enough to warrant an article featured in the New York Times.
Why? What relevance does a 50 year old book on the business world have to do with the workplace today???
Basically, because the book perfectly describes the workplace that rose up from 1950 to the late 1990s. This was the 5 day a week, 9-5 job that we have come to know and expect. Companies would provide job-security, health care, retirement funds, and sometimes even matching donations to workers' favorite non-profits (a benefit my friends and I took full advantage of for after-school activities during our middle school years).
In exchange, workers would show up every day and do exactly what the company told them to do. They'd start at a low level and hope to advance over the years. But success at work wasn't about fulfilling their personal ambitions... it was about making the company faster, better, smarter, more competitive!
In the article, "How the Yes Man Learned to Say No", New York Times Op-Ed Contributor Alan Ehrenhalt argued that we Americans have been fighting against the "Organization Man" stereotype ever since that book came out on the market. He write about how Whyte's description of the workplace is not current because "the conformist, white-bread 1950s [yielded] to the individualist rebellion of the 1960s, and to the eccentricities of the baby boom generation that dominated the two decades after that."
To Ehrenhalt, we simply could not have been living in the sort of culture described by Whyte because everyone everywhere was urging others to be individuals.
But I'm not so sure that the "Organization Man" culture was a thing of the past that died out long before Madonna put on those pointy bras.
While I was growing up, there was an established order to how I would live my life. I'd complete high school and I'd go to college. There I'd study something that I wanted to do for a job and graduate in 4 years. Then I'd go to job interviews and finally get a job.
And that's where my sequence of events stopped. All the workplace planning I've done up to this point is focused on "get qualifications for a job". I haven't planned anything after that. No one's ever told me that I need to. In the sequence of events we envision when thinking about life after college, there's no focus on setting objectives about how to be the best individual we can be. It's just "go to college, graduate, get a job". That is what we do... and that is just how the world works.
This is the sort of mentality that shows that this 50 year old book, The Organization Man, is still accurate. The New York Times article says that individuals killed the desire for an Organizational culture in the US. I disagree. I think that many of us Americans still view a secure job at a large organization as a very acceptable job. The problem today, and the reason that the Organization culture is finally dying, is that most large organizations don't want to take on the commitment of 40-year employees!
Want to learn more?
Read the book: Whyte, William H. The Organization Man. 1956
Download the article (since it's not available online anymore) Download how_the_yes_man_learned_to_say_no.htm
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