Introduction

Abstract

In 1982 management consultants Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr., published a critique of the American workplace that became the best-selling business book in history.¹ Written with little attention to literary artistry, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies might seem an unlikely place to begin a study of literature, film, and other post—World War II texts that have contributed to the discursive construction of work and workers in postmodern America. Yet what is striking to a twenty-first century reader of Peters and Waterman’s book is the matter-of-fact fashion in which they advance their thesis through the highly sexualized business idiom of their moment. Their world is one in which managers want their workforce to be “turned on,” where workers strive to “stick out,” where “tight coupling” is a celebrated business practice, and all things “hard” are privileged. The American workplace they describe appears to have gone untouched by the political efforts of the 1970s Women’s Movement. In their introduction, for instance, Peters and Waterman intone that “the excellent companies require and demand extraordinary performance from the average man,” and they continue to portray the American workforce as almost exclusively male.²