The Organization Man

The Organization Man Meaning

The Organization Man (1956)

In 1956, safety and security seemed to have overtaken the pioneer spirit of innovation that had gripped the early days of American society, as examined in Tocqueville's Democracy in America. This rugged individualism had also previously been limned in Ayn Rand's essential text on individualism pushed to its limit: Atlas Shrugged.

Fig. 1 Page from the original working manuscript of 'Democracy in America

The Organization Man Summary

Almost certainly male and white, the organization man is embodied in Whyte's text by interviews with CEOs and executives at large firms, who share their thoughts on what had changed in corporate life over the last two decades. It's a veritable field guide for the seasoned CEO.

The Social Ethic

Whyte introduced the concept of the "social ethic," a philosophy that holds that organizations are better equipped to solve problems than individuals and are, therefore, better for society. This belief makes becoming part of an organization an economic and moral choice.

Whyte does not necessarily see this as a helpful change. He felt that conformity was anodyne and did not encourage any risk-taking. The Organization Man lacked tension insofar as everything he did was in a bid for safety and security. Without this sort of tension and risk and the possibility of rising competitively above the fray of corporate America, progress would be negligible.

Conflating conformity and morality in this way affected the Organization Man–and by extension, the social order–at every level, from the kinds of food eaten, cars driven, social life engaged in, and suburban homes inhabited. This cookie-cutter life was steeped in a society that was entirely geared toward the nuclear family and the sort of monolithic existence hinted at in allegorical science fiction films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

Fig. 2 Invasion of the Body Snatchers Poster

Quotes from The Organization Man

Importance of The Organization Man

The Organization Man became a template for the soulless dirge of modern corporate life in which the individual is wholly subsumed in favor of the corporate entity. This business philosophy experienced a drop in the 1960s due to the rise in counterculture, feminism, and the questioning of gender roles in the workplace. Then it fell again in the 1980s when businesses began to embrace entrepreneurship and innovation.

Companies like Apple stepped up to the plate and became the future wave. The likes of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and other Silicon Valley stalwarts began to rule the roost and champion the rugged individuality, the willingness to go it alone, and the stick-to-it-iveness of America's innovators celebrated in Tocqueville's pivotal tome Democracy in America.

These lone-wolf CEOs were proud of their individuality and independence, wearing them like badges. They were proud to be dropouts or degreeless. And they even became role models when later copied by Elon Musk and Elizabeth Holmes, both brandishing "rogue billionaire" images. Still, these creatives demanded absolute loyalty from their worker bees, so these were more like dictatorships.

Fig. 4 Elon Musk

There was a fine line between individualism and outright hubris, which was most flagrantly crossed by Holmes, who is on trial in 2022 for fraud in touting designs to investors for a medical device that didn't yet exist. This promotion of "vaporware," or designs that don't quite work yet but are intended (and sometimes launched) for the market, is par for the course in Silicon Valley when presenting to investors. But it begs the question, how far is too far in our quest for revolution in business?

Since William Whyte seems to find flaws even in the most rudimentary science, we can conclude that his views trace a line from the Atomic Age to our current dystopia, which finds individualism itself in crisis as it eats itself, gorging on its toxic narcissism and greed that has been steeped in a diet of conspiracy theories and science denial. One wonders what Whyte would make of it.

William Whyte's The Organization Man

The Organization Man has had a pronounced effect on how we as a society view business and how we live. But what are some of Whyte's other works? Let's have a look.

• The Last Landscape (1970)
• The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980)
• The City as Dwelling: Walking, Sitting, Shaping (1980)
• City: Rediscovering the Center (1980)
• The Exploding Metropolis (1993)
• The Last Landscape (1970)
• Time of War: Remembering Guadalcanal, a Battle Without Maps (2000).

The Organization Woman?

White men have historically held the highest number of CEO positions globally. Representation of women and other minorities has been slim since the first female Fortune 500 company CEO was appointed in 1972. The first Latino CEO wasn't named until 1982, and the first African American CEO was in 1999. Since 2000, white men have continued to occupy around 85 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions. women CEOs have gained 7 percent of the demographic, while African Americans, Latinos, and East and South Asians comprise the remaining positions.

Fig. 5 Madeleine Albright, the first woman to become U.S. Secretary of State