The Business Executive: The Psychodynamics of a Social Role

Abstract

Modern business executives have in common many personality characteristics, which are a reflection partly of the socially stereotyped conception of the businessman and partly of some underlying similarities of personality structure. The successful executive represents a crystallization of many of the attitudes and values generally accepted by middle-class American society. Acquisitiveness and achievement, self-directed-ness and independent thought, are in this group counterbalanced by uncertainty, constant activity, the continual fear of losing group, and the inability to be introspectively casual.