The Organizational Man

It may be difficult to grasp the magnitude of these seismic changes in the workplace. For a bit of contrast, let's consider corporate life in the mid-twentieth century. In 1956, William Whyte published a book titled The Organization Man based on his observations and interviews with several executives in some of the largest companies of the time, Ford and General Electric. Whyte saw a group of men, and their families, that subjugated their personal growth and independence to fit in with the organization, in order to avoid losing their comfortable status, paycheck, and way of life. There was an implied contract between the organization and its employees that the organization would supply the economic and social support in exchange for the individual's unequivocal commitment to the organization:

"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."(p. 8)

As our readings for this week will emphasize, the psychological contract between employees and their organizations has changed quite radically since the times of The Organizational Man. Many of these changes began back in the 1980's and 1990's, so many of our class members may have little exposure to the sentiments in Whyte's classic book. There was a time when people felt that a single organization would take care of them for life, by providing them with stability and protect them from job loss and obsolescence. Today, many of us see this perspective as naïve, and that there is little trust between organizations and employees. In fact, the more distance we get from the days of this mode of organizational life, the more antiquated Whyte's The Organization Man seems.