Organization Man—Prospect for the Future

The author is indebted for helpful suggestions in the preparation of this paper to Professors Vaughn Blankenship, Edward Feigenbaum, and Lyman Porter, all of the University of California, Berkeley.

Conformity seems to have been a major issue throughout American intellectual history. De Tocqueville commented on it in the 1830's. George F. Babbitt was the Organization Man of the 1920's. But there is a significant change: The big-city corporation rather than the small-town main street is now the villian. Some of these questions are discussed by Lipset Seymour M. in his “A Changing American Character?” in Lipset Seymour M. Lowenthal Leo , eds., Culture and Social Character (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1961).

“Executives Who Can't Manage,” Atlantic, July, 1962.

Ironically, for a while a new wave of conformity swept industry: A near-unanimous denunciation of conformity—and the wolf-pack was led by top executives and personnel directors of some of America's most conformity-requiring companies. Elsewhere I have suggested that the anti-human relations aspects of this crusade are related to management's recent be-tough-to-unions policy. See Strauss George , “The Shifting Power Balance in the Plant,” Industrial Relations, Vol. I, No. 3 (1962), pp. 65–96.

See Strauss George , “Work Flow Frictions, Interfunctional Rivalry, and Professionalism,” Human Organization (in press).

One study suggests that staff men (functional men) are more likely than line men to see their jobs as requiring traits such as being “co-operative,” “adaptable,” “tactful,” or “agreeable” rather than being “forceful,” “decisive,” or “self-confident.” Porter Lyman W. Henry Mildred M. , Job Attitudes in Management: VI. Perceptions of the Importance of Certain Personality Traits as A Function of Line vs. Staff Type of Job (in press). In other words, staff men seem to be more human-relations oriented than line men.

Much work remains to be done before such information and control systems are made really effective.

So-called “heuristic” problem-solving techniques are now available which permit the computer to engage in highly creative “thought.” But these are not likely to have much practical value for management in the near future.

Some managers have become so adjusted to filling their days with routine decisions that they will find it impossible to adapt to the new regime. Instead they will occupy their hours with new forms of busy-work.

See, for example, Leavitt Harold J. Whisler Thomas L. , “Management in the 1980's,” Harvard Business Review, Vol. 36, No. 6 (1958), p. 47.

Ibid., p. 41. Herbert Simon makes roughly the same point, “The kinds of activities which now characterize middle management will become more completely automated than the others, and hence will have a smaller part in the whole management picture.” “Management by Machine,” in Anshen Melville Bach George L. , eds., Management and the Corporation in 1985 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), p. 50.

Leavitt Whisler , op. cit., p. 46.

Gordon Robert Aaron Howell James Edwin , Higher Education for Business (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959) and Pierson Frank C. and others, The Education of American Businessmen (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959). Professor Vaughn Blankenship argues that these reports miss the main point: The main purpose of a business school is (and probably should be) to teach not analytic skills but social skills, what to wear and to drink, how to talk, what views are safe, and so forth. Recent studies have suggested that one of the chief purposes of the medical school is to teach medical students how to feel, act, and look like doctors. See, for example, Becker Howard S. , Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961).

It is also argued that, since the validity of these tests is hard to prove, they do neither harm nor good.

Ironically, some of the companies which practice rotation most assiduously, also have implicit requirement for promotion that a man should “be active in the community.” But newcomers to a community are rarely accepted quickly into the really important community organizations. In one community this problem was solved by establishing a complete new set of “service clubs” which catered just to the transient. Turnover in these organizations was very fast, and it was easy for a man to move up quickly to a top position.

W. Lloyd Warner and John Abegglen talk of the upwardly mobile executive as a man who is “always arriving.” See their Big Business Leaders in America (New York: Harpers, 1955).

McGregor Douglas , “An Uneasy Look at Performance Appraisal,” Harvard Business Review, Vol. 35, No. 3 (1957), p. 90.

For example, Editors of Fortune, “How to Fire an Executive,” in Executive Life (New York: Doubleday, 1956). Erwin Goffman has written on the process of “cooling out,” that is, of “letting a man down gently.” This process occurs in business as elsewhere.

Lipset , op. cit., p. 169.

Executive action, sensitivity training, and laboratory training are all variations of the T group approach.

True, if teams are involved in the game, then there is a human-relations problem of getting team members to agree to a decision. Interestingly, advocates of T groups and business games both claim their techniques improve decision-making abilities, but they use the term “decision-making” in very different ways. See, for example, Blake Robert R. Moulton Jane S. , Group Dynamics—Key to Decision-Making (Houston, Texas: Gulf Publishing Company, 1961).

It might make a useful study to compare the companies and groups within management which have promoted each of these types of training.

For a pioneering study in this area, see Dill William R. Hilton Thomas L. Reitman Walter R. , The New Managers (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1962). Whyte W. H. , himself, points out that Organization Man rarely gets to the top.