The New Individualists: The Generation After the Organization Man

Offers the findings of hundreds of interviews which demonstrate how a new American character is emerging that will be able to deal successfully with a global economy

The "organization man" profiled in William Whyte Jr.'s classic 1956 study was a gray conformist. But his rebellious, artistic offspring brought their philosophy of self-actualization into the workplace, according to management consultant Leinberger and freelance writer Tucker, who tracked down and interviewed more than 300 of Whyte's original subjects and their now-adult children. This treatise offers a devastating, uncanny profile of the new corporate workforce and its need to shape up. The "authentic self," the character type said by the authors to have replaced Whyte's organization man, is being supplanted, they claim, by yet another type--the "artificial person," an "alarmingly open-ended" character whose outward optimism masks a gnawing pessimism and an ever-readiness to switch jobs or find a more comfortable niche in the corporate network. Leinberger and Tucker benefited from the full cooperation of Whyte, who supplied them with his original research files. Author tour.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

To see the world in a grain of sand might be within the powers of a Blake, but realists may doubt whether a high-tech consultant and his collaborator can accurately assess a generational subgroup and its impact on American society on the basis of 300 or so interviews over a seven-year period, plus ancillary statistical data. Undaunted, Leinberger and Tucker (co-author, James Brown: The Godfather of Soul, 1986) attempt to define the approximately 19 million adult children sired by ``organization men'' (the felicitous term coined in 1956 by William H. Whyte). They do so, moreover, in deadly earnest fashion and with a surfeit of bafflegab. Focusing on the members of two putatively representative families (who were among Whyte's original subjects), the authors trace the typically convulsive evolution of organizational offspring from so-called authentic selves to artificial persons. In this murky context, they purport to probe such issues as: how the life experiences of this minority segment of the 75-million-strong baby-boom generation compare with those of its parents; occupational rivalry; socioeconomic trends in a postmetropolitan era; and the widespread urge to be creative. The Leinberger-Tucker team concludes that sons and daughters of the organization are all ``stout individualists--each in exactly the same way,'' i.e., with values, philosophical outlooks, and underlying motives that are essentially identical. From a behavioral standpoint, the authors argue, these less-than-rugged individualists express themselves either as humanists or egoists. By their account, the former tend to demand that organizations become more caring and sensitive, while the latter reason they can function without animating essences or principles. According to Leinberger and Tucker, the implications of the ``ambiguously enterprising'' organization offsprings' assuming positions of trust, responsibility, and power in the workplace as their elders pass the torch are far from clear. Despite a paucity of credible evidence to support any such claim, the authors theorize that the advent of these frustrated narcissists could signal a restoration of US competitiveness as well as compassion. Haute twaddle. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Leinberger and Tucker present an extensive analysis based upon seven years of interview research with some of the original "organization men" described in William Whyte Jr.'s classic The Organization Man ( LJ 11/1/56) and their adult children. They describe the shift in commitment from a generation whose careers meant devotion to one company to a generation that rejects such blind loyalty and seeks to find their own place. The authors contrast the men of the 1950s who rode upward economic trends in their corporations and defined new cultural values and living patterns with their adult children of the 1980s who grew up in relative affluence but felt little connection to the temporary communities in which they lived. While this title is quite different from Amanda Bennett's The Death of the Organization Man ( LJ 2/1/90), it is similar in defining the new reality of individuals managing their careers across organizations. A valuable, well-written work that is highly recommended for all types of collections.
- Jane M. Kathman, Coll. of St. Benedict, St. Joseph, Minn.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.