The forgotten ‘immortalizer’: Recovering William H Whyte as the founder and future of groupthink research

Autor: Pol, Oliver, Bridgman, Todd, Cummings, Stephen
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Human Relations. 75:1615-1641
ISSN: 1741-282X
0018-7267
DOI: 10.1177/00187267211070680
Popis: Irving Janis’s concept of ‘groupthink’, the idea that a collective desire for consensus overrides the realistic appraisals of alternatives and leads to poor group decision making, is a staple of social science textbooks. Despite gaining little support in empirical studies, Janis’s eight symptoms of groupthink remains a popular framework. What has been forgotten, however, is that nearly 20 years before Janis’s supposed invention, groupthink was coined by social critic William H Whyte, author of one of the 1950s, most influential books on management. Adding to the growing interest in a historical turn in Management and Organization Studies, we investigate how and why Whyte’s groupthink was over-written by a history that found Janis’s ideas more useful, and outline how recovering Whyte can add value to our thinking now.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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