Re-inventing organization man?

Abstract

In 1956, William H. Whyte wrote the influential The Organisation Man a vituperative attack on the ‘social ethic’ shaping the values of those in the middle ranks of private and public corporations. This oddly named ethic was a collectivist nightmare which morally legitimated the powers of society against the individual. Amongst those blamed was Mayo and his obsessive concern for belongingness and group adjustment. Whyte’s solution was for the individual to fight a rearguard battle against the organisation, with the aid of some useful advice such as ‘how to cheat at personality tests’. As Peters and Waterman note (1982: 105), the association with grey conformity made corporate culture a taboo topic. Culture only became acceptable as an issue when it was associated with the necessity for managers to be sensitive towards national diversities in the ‘collective programming of the mind’ (Hofstede, 1980).