Termed coined by William Whyte, in a 1956 book of that name, which suggested that business culture and the attempt to make people work for the profit of the corporation affected people’s social lives. Americans, Whyte argued, acted like cogs in a machine, conforming to group values at the office and home. This lifestyle was represented in many movies of the 1950s and early 1960s (e.g. The Apartment, 1960, in which Jack Lemmon lends his apartment to his bosses for their sexual liaisons), though Whyte believed the organization man’s natural habitat was the suburb. The sameness and impotence associated with the organization man is captured nicely in the character of Mr Arnold in The Wonder Years (ABC, 1988–93). The organization man also resented his wife for pushing him to succeed in this corporate world, resentment described in Philip Roth’s My Life as a Man (1974). The beats resisted the siren call of the corporation, and juvenile delinquents, like James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), resented their fathers for their emasculation.
- Part of Speech: noun
- Industry/Domain: Culture
- Category: American culture
- Company: Routledge
Creator
- Aaron J
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(Manila, Philippines)