The Organization Man

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Title The Organization Man
Publication Type Book
Pub Year 1956
Authors Whyte, W. H.
Publisher Simon & Schuster,
Keywords change, false self, group, ideals, ideas, organization man, personality test, risk
Notes change"It is the nature of a new idea to confound current consensus--even the mildly new idea. It might be patently in order, but, unfortunately, the group has a vested interest in its miseries as well as its pleasures, and irrational as this may be, many a member of organization life can recall instances where the group clung to known disadvantages rather than risk the anarchies of change." (p. 440) false self"We practice a great mutual deception. Everyone knows that they themselves are different--that they are shy in company, perhaps, or dislike many things most people seem to like--but they are not sure that other people are different too. Like the norms of personality testing, they see about them the sum of efforts of people like themselves to seem as normal as others and possibly a little more so. It is hard enough to learn to live with our inadequacies, and we need not make ourselves more miserable by a spurious ideal of middle-class adjustment. Adjustment to what? Nobody really knows--and the tragedy is that they don't realize that the so-confident-seeming other people don't know either."
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