Word: gamesmanly
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...flaw in Maccoby's book is that he does prcisely what he scores his subjects for doing. By abstracting business from the unavoidable reality of money, common ambition and greed, he becomes too cerebral. By dealing solely with psychological impulses, he over-analyzes as badly as the Gamesman who cannot allow compassion to enter his own careful cost-benefit analyses. Perhaps this was intentional--the Gamesman Maccoby portrays is certainly an interesting figure, and interesting figures sell books--but more likely it was simply the product of an understandable enthusiasm to make a careful scholarly presentation as entertaining as possible...
...maybe he is. At least, that's the impression the reader gets from The Gamesman, psychologist Michael Maccoby '54's latest entry in the pop sociology derby. Maccoby's book is an interesting profile of what he calls the new American corporate elite, a series of case studies designed to illustrate exactly just what type of person runs the companies thatrun your life. Maccoby's answer--that American companies are presided over by a passel of hyperactive, hypercool chess players who are only in the business world for the thrill of the sport--may sound a bit farfetched...
...author takes his argument where others, such as David Riesman '31, Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus, left off in the 1950s. Maccoby's Gamesman is a further evolution of Riesman's corporate man, a tough, manipulative manager of people and industrial systems rather than an entrepreneur with marketable skills. What makes the Gamesman different, though, is what makes him want to do all that manipulating in the first place--not money, not power, but instead the glory and satisfaction that come from being a winner. The modern businessman, it seems, is driven not by a work ethic...
...Jungle Fighter, whose specialty is high-stakes politicking and backstabbing, and the Company Man, who gets ahead because he'd rather lose his family than his job--are familiar types who have had their day but are being slowly phased out by a fourth wunderkind. It is the Gamesman, Maccoby maintains, who by his natural competitiveness and daring is best suiting to run the corporate monoliths in an increasingly faster-paced, constantly changing society. Playing with both people and technology, the Gamesman combines the attributes of the other types but infuses them all with a gambler's nerve...
...gamesman, a high salary is important mainly because this is the way the game is scored, and he doesn't want to fall behind the others. He sees his salary not in terms of becoming rich, but in comparative terms of staying ahead of others in his peer group...