How to Succeed in Business
FRIEDENBERG, DANIEL M.
How to Succeed in Business THE PYRAMID CLIMBERS By Vance Packard McGraw-Hill. 339 pp. $5.00. Reviewed By DANIEL M. FRIEDENBERG Contributor, "Harper's," "New Republic," "Commentary" A fat...
...Gary Cooper would fit the bill, but obviously Clark Gable could not qualify...
...And bachelors over 35 are definitely not wanted: They might be queer or troublesome...
...He is obsessed with growth and has a passionate fondness for order...
...The first and largest discriminatory act is directed against women: "One accident of birth alone eliminates from serious consideration half the human race residing within the U.S...
...Eliminating women, persons without a college diploma, Negroes, Jews, and certain elements of the Catholic faith, it is clear that candidates for the top levels of the corporate pyramid make up a very small percentage of the total population...
...This drive gets more things done, contributes to dominance and tenacity...
...Overall, the author estimates that through deliberate exclusion practices U.S...
...Research indicates that the sex habits of the top executives conform accordingly...
...Reviewed By DANIEL M. FRIEDENBERG Contributor, "Harper's," "New Republic," "Commentary" A fat book, consisting of almost 350 pages, has been published by the amateur sociologist Vance Packard...
...Considering that on a revenue basis General Motors is larger than any state in the Union, and that the 50 biggest corporations have a greater aggregate income than the 50 states, some of the implications are immediately apparent...
...There but for the grace of God go I...
...Quoting a leading researcher in this field, Packard states: "Three characteristics of top executives are: slow speech, impressive appearance, and a complete lack of sense of humor...
...The driving man is "action oriented...
...the wife should be poised, with good social manners...
...Marriage, however, should not be too important to the man since it might compete with his primary loyalty to the job...
...A good scout is not only brave, clean and reverend but chaste too, or the similitude thereof...
...As for the rest, Sinclair Lewis etched them in acid many years ago in Babbitt...
...The one element common to all successful executives is drive, "driving force—born out of anxiety," as the author quotes an important consultant...
...Entitled The Pyramid Climbers, it is a study of the executives who rise in the corporate hierarchies of America, a subject that could have been adequately handled in an essay of some 25 pages...
...the proportion of beginners in management training who have college degrees runs close to 90 per cent today, compared to 67 per cent only 25 years ago...
...The marriage must be stable...
...The Pyramid Climbers tells us that U.S...
...corporations are left with a pool of less than 3 per cent of American adults from which to find their high-level leaders...
...The biggest executives treat their marital partners with the same ordered efficiency as their jobs...
...For executives earning more than $20,000 a year, "the personality of the wife is exceedingly important...
...Executives in heavy industry are predominantly WASP, with almost no Negroes allowed, few Jews, and serious handicaps for Catholics, especially those of Italian or Slavic descent...
...contrary to myth and fantasy novels, erotic activity and money-making do not seem to be bedfellows...
...And the older and bigger the company, the more stereotyped becomes its employment and advancement pattern...
...she should know how to handle her liquor and fit into the ethnic and religious pattern of the company...
...At the very top, his IQ is not exceptional...
...Packard lists the most desirable qualities of a successful executive —they sound like the Boy Scout Oath and, indeed, are its adult projection...
...The poor devils suffer for their incomes of $50,000-$ 100,000 per annum...
...But Packard, who dealt with overproduction of tinsel items in his previous book, The Waste Makers, felt impelled to prove he knew what was wrong with America by imitating it...
...As Arthur Motley, former chairman of the U.S...
...but he usually has an assistant with a much greater one...
...We stand reassured...
...He is somewhat antiintellectual...
...He is quite selfrighteous and has a profound faith in business...
...Princeton is the most preferred school, followed by Yale and Harvard...
...corporations choose executives according to rigid rules that create a self-perpetuating oligarchy...
...The executive's sex life and family design is also important...
...Chamber of Commerce, quipped: "A well-adjusted executive is one whose intake of pep pills overbalances his consumption of tranquilizers just enough to leave him sufficient energy for the weekly visit to his psychiatrist" Although The Pyramid Climbers does not dwell too much on the point, it is certainly preferable to be born in the right family (a Ford of Ford), make a wealthy marriage (a Greenewalt of Du Pont) or have the right contacts (a Burgess of American Machine & Foundry) than suffer the ordeal of a pyramid climb...
...He believes in authority and believes he is the authority...
...In the choice between company and wife, the former wins hands down...
...We can be consoled, however, since the chiefs of the vast number of leading American corporations did just that...
...The smaller the town, the more important wife interviewing becomes as part of a man's candidacy...
...A Fortune survey of some 1,700 top executives revealed that close to a third who had attended college had gone to one of five Ivy League colleges...
...And this elite group is even further restricted by the corporations' preference for graduates of a handful of select colleges...
...Moreover, what are called WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) candidates are overwhelmingly preferred...
...The executive look and manner is equally important...
...Interestingly enough, Packard states that Japan and the Soviet Union are even more rigid in this respect than the U.S., while Germany has the most flexible attitude on collegiate background...
...The current fashion favors tall, lean men of story-book appearance, who must exude a wholesome, clean-shaven, dignified and well-bred attitude...
...Wives must join the team and fit into company plans...
...Education is equally restrictive as a basis for entry into the charmed circle...
Vol. 46 • January 1963 • No. 2
