The Organization Man
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In one of the most penetrating sociological critiques of twentieth-century American life, The Organization Man dissects the quiet but seismic transformation of the American dream — from rugged individualism to corporate conformity. William H. Whyte chronicles the rise of a new social character: the mid-century American worker who has traded personal ambition and independent thought for the security and belonging offered by large bureaucratic organisations, be they corporations, suburbs, or universities. Through meticulous research, interviews, and sharp cultural observation, Whyte argues that this collective ideology — what he terms the Social Ethic — had come to replace the Protestant Work Ethic as the dominant moral framework of postwar America, quietly reshaping identity, family life, and ambition in its image. A landmark work of social criticism first published in 1956, The Organization Man remains as bracingly relevant as ever, illustrating how institutions can absorb and neutralise the very human creativity they depend upon. Whyte's prose is authoritative yet accessible, blending the rigour of sociology with the narrative compulsion of great journalism, and his portrait of suburban conformity — the identical houses, the committee-minded thinking, the suppression of eccentricity — is rendered with devastating precision. A foundational text for anyone seeking to understand how modern capitalism shapes the human soul, it leaves the reader asking an uncomfortable question: in the age of the open-plan office and the corporate away-day, have things really changed at all?
Author: William H. Whyte
Format: Paperback
Genre: Society & culture
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In one of the most penetrating sociological critiques of twentieth-century American life, The Organization Man dissects the quiet but seismic transformation of the American dream — from rugged individualism to corporate conformity. William H. Whyte chronicles the rise of a new social character: the mid-century American worker who has traded personal ambition and independent thought for the security and belonging offered by large bureaucratic organisations, be they corporations, suburbs, or universities. Through meticulous research, interviews, and sharp cultural observation, Whyte argues that this collective ideology — what he terms the Social Ethic — had come to replace the Protestant Work Ethic as the dominant moral framework of postwar America, quietly reshaping identity, family life, and ambition in its image. A landmark work of social criticism first published in 1956, The Organization Man remains as bracingly relevant as ever, illustrating how institutions can absorb and neutralise the very human creativity they depend upon. Whyte's prose is authoritative yet accessible, blending the rigour of sociology with the narrative compulsion of great journalism, and his portrait of suburban conformity — the identical houses, the committee-minded thinking, the suppression of eccentricity — is rendered with devastating precision. A foundational text for anyone seeking to understand how modern capitalism shapes the human soul, it leaves the reader asking an uncomfortable question: in the age of the open-plan office and the corporate away-day, have things really changed at all?