The Executive Clan
TEAD, ORDWAY
WRITERS and WRITING The Executive Clan The Organization Man. By William H. Whyte Jr. Simon & Schuster. 429 pp. $5.00. The theme of this book has already become familiar through the author's...
...It is unquestionably and unfortunately true that young men, often reinforced by their famiReviewed by Ordway Tead Former chairman, New York City Board of Higher Education lies, are seeking through their college education a quick and easy leverage into a well-paying, corporate executive sinecure...
...But his diagnostic despondency seems to go along with an embracing personal mood of discouragement edging toward futility which I confess I distrust...
...Surely there are definite elements of personal productivity and sensitivity in many members of the present executive generation which cannot be dismissed even by such earnest concern as the present volume exhibits...
...Whyte is afraid that too many young men just out of college (along with their conforming wives) are not only willing but eager to sell their souls to their corporate employers and to order their relations both within and without the business world in conformity to what is expected of them as "good organization men...
...I find the discussion of the quality of higher education in this country more convincing and illuminating than the purely organizational theme and treatment...
...belief in 'belong-ingness' as the ultimate need of the individual...
...There are three propositions against which the author is inveighing: "A belief in the group as the source of creativity...
...But I still have to be persuaded, by evidence not here supplied, that what Mr...
...but that it is anything like as sweeping, inclusive and corruptive to character as he seems to think, I have my doubts...
...There is some body of support for the general position taken by Mr...
...And some of the current discussion of creativity, belongingness, and a science of human relations can be construed as regarding these as ends in themselves, in a shallow way that we should be warned against...
...In short, I find undue exaggeration in the position here taken and remain unconvinced, even though mildly disturbed...
...Here he has aimed at a fuller, more systematic setting forth of his thesis with some documentation in the direction of proof...
...However, such a swing to the humanities is by no means unanimous...
...The theme of this book has already become familiar through the author's contributions to Fortune magazine...
...He is no doubt correct in pointing to an exaggerated stress on these three propositions in many managerial quarters...
...This is true of small liberal-arts colleges, of a few universities, of engineering schools, and even to some extent of law and medical schools...
...There is without question a real problem arising from the too great swing to conformity, trivial standards of success, and a failure to see the total human situation as significant apart from one's corporate progress...
...The book is a plea for a greater degree of individualism of spirit and independence of thought on the part of young executives trying to get onward and upward in corporate employment...
...Despite the air of documented erudition, Mr...
...and a belief in the application of science to achieve the belongingness...
...Like C. Wright Mills in The Power Elite, the author seems to have distorted reality in order to make a stimulating and controversial book...
...Yet when I compare the attitudes and conduct of young men of my acquaintance now in executive posts with the attitudes and behavior of their prototypes of thirty years ago, I am persuaded that we have not gone from bad to worse...
...Whyte does not offer enough real evidence beyond opinion to show that his argument characterizes a trend in social relations which is virtually inevitable and perhaps even sinister...
...Whyte calls a "social ethic" has completely preempted the field of young men's motives as against the "Protestant ethic" which he rightly contends to have been current early in the 1900s...
...Yet there is more recently an unmistakable swing back from the demand for a completely utilitarian body of college subject-matter toward greater emphasis on the humanities...
...Even so, the volume would be more effective if it were half as long, repetition were removed, and "proof" shortened and sharpened...
...The fact that the author has no specially helpful words, programs or philosophy to commend to the reader is, of course, no sign that he is wrong in his diagnosis...
Vol. 40 • March 1957 • No. 10
