William Whyte's The Organization Man

William Whyte, a Princeton graduate and an ex-Marine who fought in World War II, arrived at Fortune magazine in 1946. It was a time of economic prosperity. Companies such as General Electric, IBM, and Kodak were growing rapidly and enjoying unprecedented earnings. But Whyte wasn’t a balance sheet eyeballer. He was Fortune’s resident sociologist. He wanted to explore the interior lives of the men (and they were almost entirely men) who toiled at these sprawling companies and look at how they were being shaped by the corporate culture dominating so much of American life. Whyte’s research for the magazine provided the raw material for The Organization Man, his bestseller published in 1956. A critique of society as much as business culture, the book diagnosed groupthink—a term Whyte coined—in the suburbs as well as the boardroom, and became one of the century’s most influential pieces of commentary.