William H. Whyte





William H. Whyte

Author profile


born
West Chester, Pennsylvania, The United States

gender
male

genre


About this author

William Hollingsworth "Holly" Whyte (1917 - 12 January 1999) was an American urbanist, organizational analyst, journalist and people-watcher.
Whyte was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1917 and died in New York City in 1999. An early graduate of St. Andrew's School in Middletown, Delaware, he graduated from Princeton University and then served in Marine Corps. In 1946 he joined Fortune magazine.
Whyte wrote a 1956 bestseller titled The Organization Man after Fortune Magazine sponsored him to do extensive interviews on the CEOs of corporations such as General Electric and Ford.
While working with the New York City Planning Commission in 1969, Whyte began to use direct observation to describe behavior in urban settings. With research assist...more


Average rating: 3.99 · 269 ratings · 48 reviews · 10 distinct works
The Social Life of Small Ur...
4.26 of 5 stars 426 avg rating — 94 ratings — published 1980 — 2 editions
My rating:
didn't like it it was ok liked it really liked it it was amazing
add to my books
The Organization Man: The B...
by
3.54 of 5 stars 354 avg rating — 71 ratings — published 1956 — 3 editions
My rating:
didn't like it it was ok liked it really liked it it was amazing
add to my books
City: Rediscovering the Center
4.12 of 5 stars 412 avg rating — 50 ratings — published 1989 — 3 editions
My rating:
didn't like it it was ok liked it really liked it it was amazing
add to my books
The Essential William H. Whyte
by
4.0 of 5 stars 400 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 2000
My rating:
didn't like it it was ok liked it really liked it it was amazing
add to my books
The Last Landscape
2.83 of 5 stars 283 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 1970 — 2 editions
My rating:
didn't like it it was ok liked it really liked it it was amazing
add to my books
Organization Man
3.33 of 5 stars 333 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1972
My rating:
didn't like it it was ok liked it really liked it it was amazing
add to my books
The Exploding Metropolis
4.5 of 5 stars 450 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1993
My rating:
didn't like it it was ok liked it really liked it it was amazing
add to my books
Time of War: Remembering Gu...
0.0 of 5 stars 000 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2000
My rating:
didn't like it it was ok liked it really liked it it was amazing
add to my books
The WPA Guide to New York C...
by
4.24 of 5 stars 424 avg rating — 37 ratings — published 1995
My rating:
didn't like it it was ok liked it really liked it it was amazing
add to my books
Ceramics and Print
by
3.0 of 5 stars 300 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1995 — 5 editions
My rating:
didn't like it it was ok liked it really liked it it was amazing
add to my books
More books by William H. Whyte…

Upcoming Events

No scheduled events. Add an event.

“The I.B.M. machine has no ethic of its own; what it does is enable one or two people to do the computing work that formerly required many more people. If people often use it stupidly, it's their stupidity, not the machine's, and a return to the abacus would not exorcise the failing. People can be treated as drudges just as effectively without modern machines.”
William H. Whyte, The Organization Man: The Book That Defined a Generation

“Someday someone is going to create a stir by proposing a radical new tool for the study people. It will be called the face-value technique. It would be based on the premise that people often do what they do for the reasons they think they do. The use of this technique will lead to many pitfalls, for it is undeniably true that people do not always act logically or say what they mean. But I wonder if it would produce findings any more unscientific than the opposite course.”
William H. Whyte, The Organization Man: The Book That Defined a Generation

“Their attitude toward another aspect of organization shows the same bias. What of the "group life", the loss of individualism? Once upon a time it was conventional for young men to view the group life of the big corporations as one of its principal disadvantages. Today, they see it as a positive boon. Working with others, they believe, will reduce the frustration of work, and they often endow the accompanying suppression of ego with strong spiritual overtones. They will concede that there is often a good bit of wasted time in the committee way of life and that the handling of human relations involves much suffering of fools gladly. But this sort of thing, they say, is the heart of the organization man's job, not merely the disadvantages of it. "Any man who feels frustrated by these things," one young trainee with face unlined said to me, "can never be an executive".”
William H. Whyte, The Organization Man: The Book That Defined a Generation



Is this you? Let us know. If not, help out and invite William to Goodreads.