Thinkers 50 Management: Cutting Edge Thinking to Engage and Motivate Your Employees for Success

CHAPTER3

Engaging People

In the 1950s, the archetypal employee was “the man in the gray flannel suit,” immortalized in Sloan Wilson’s book of that name. Implicit to the career of the corporate man was the understanding that loyalty and solid performance brought job security. This was mutually beneficial. The executive gained a respectable income and a high degree of security; the company gained loyal, hardworking executives. Win, win.

This unspoken pact became known as the psychological contract. The originator of the phrase was the MIT-based social psychologist Edgar Schein. Schein’s interest in the employee-employer relationship developed during the late 1950s. Schein noted the similarities between the brainwashing of prisoners of war he had ...