The forgotten ‘immortalizer’: Recovering William H Whyte as the founder and future of groupthink research
研究发现群体思维概念并非由欧文·贾尼斯首创，而是由社会评论家威廉·H·怀特在20年前提出，并探讨为何贾尼斯的版本被广泛接受，以及重新发掘怀特对当前研究的价值。
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.