That Was Then: This Is the New Normal About Work

William H. Whyte wrote The Organization Man in 1956. See how much things have changed:

“On the fundamental premise of the new model executive … the young men who hope to be that vary little, and from company to company, region to region, you hear a litany increasingly standard. It goes something like this:

Be loyal to the company and the company will be loyal to you. After all, if you do a good job for the organization, it is only good sense for the organization to be good to you, because that will be best for everybody. There are a bunch of real people around here. Tell them what you think and they will respect you for it. They don’t want a man to fret and stew about his work. It won’t happen to me. A man who gets ulcers probably should not be in business anyway.”[i]

[i] Whyte, William, The Organization Man, 1956.

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