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The Corrosion of Character.- The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, by Richard Sennett. New York: Norton, 1998.
Workplace flexibility is the topic of Richard Sennett's new book, his latest analysis of class, work, and social relations. But this book is not the typical "how to" treatment of flexibility found in the business section of the local Barnes and Noble. Instead, Sennett seeks to remind us that stability-currently so maligned by business writers and consultants-has distinct benefits for individuals and society. More important, he raises a warning flag about the costs of flexibility and the toll it can take on our energy, our relationships, and our very characters.
The fundamental question for Sennett regarding the continual reengineering and restructuring taking place in U.S. firms is not how to extract the maximum profitability from such changes but whether they are worth it at all: "Will flexibility with all the risks and uncertainties it entails in fact remedy the human evil it sets out to attack?" (p. 45). That human evil is, of course, rigidity, as well as the bureaucracy and regimentation that often accompany it. Sennett's answer to the question is a clear no, but at the same time, he is not nostalgic for a return of Whyte's (1956) organization man and the hierarchy that dominated him.
This book is an essay, rather than a research study (although Sennett does gather data through interviews with workers from diverse walks of life), and is divided into chapters with short titles, such as "Drift," "Risk," and "Failure." A structure he uses successfully throughout the book is to introduce these subtopics through tracing the word's origin, and then use it to illustrate how far our current practice has strayed from this original intent. Thus, we learn that the word "flexibility" was introduced in the fifteenth century as a way of describing the manner in which tree branches can bend to the wind without breaking and then return...