1960 Organization Man Meets 2007 Social Network
by Joe McKendrick
Stanley Bing, who’s column regularly graces the back page of Fortune, brings old-world thinking to the brave new world of techno-business. In fact, he seems like a guy stuck in 1960, looking forward to his three-martini lunch. He probably spends the afternoon in his office practicing golf putts into a floor cup, just like the executives in those old movies, or Darren’s boss Larry at McMahon & Tate.
Yet, Bing’s the boss at a modern-day corporation. In this latest column, Bing gets some social networking religion. “These days a person without a social network is an island,” he decides.
However, being the face-to-face, drink-in-hand schmoozer he is, Bing decides he wasn’t cut out for such global electronic interactions. He didn’t like the idea of personal details “rocketing around a community the size of Sweden, available to a vast pool of people trolling the electronic landscape.”
How many other bosses out there would have be happier in a 1960 corporation than dealing with today’s digital realities? Plenty, I’m sure.
