Abstract

There is no objective way to assess the amount of human ineffectiveness and waste at the managerial levels of organizations. However, most managers keenly sense a wide discrepancy between what they and what other managers feel they could accomplish in their work, and their actual results. From the organizational point of view, this kind of waste may be necessary, an inevitable consequence of highly complex organizational structures and processes. However, the social consequences are borne directly by the men and women in organizations whose personal values, attitudes, hopes, aspirations, and above all, feelings of personal integrity and self-worth, suffer. From sociologists' own experiences as teachers, management development trainers and researchers, they see some clear implications of this critical focus for the management of managers' careers, as practiced by themselves and by their organizations. Sociologists maintain that the more the adult individual can incorporate into his total life the positive aspects of youth's self-questioning, the more he sees alternatives and the opportunities for choice while mellowing this youthful zest with his accumulating life experiences, the more effective and integrated he will feel and be in his career and life.