SCRAMBLING: Zig-zagging Your Way to the Top

Those familiar with Michael Maccoby's corporate cast of characters in The Gamesmen will find little new in this evocation of ""scramblers"" and ""stabilizers"" (roughly equivalent to Maccoby's jungle fighters and company men). For those just tuning in, the corporate work environment is supposedly changing: since the Sixties--thanks to the conglomerate craze, accelerated divorce rates, the prevalence of MBA training--individualism has been on the rise. In practical terms, this means increased opportunity to move from job to job, either between divisions of a company or between companies. ""Scramblers"" do not work for one organization or boss; they see themselves as working for themselves and simply receiving their paychecks from another source. (In Maslow's traditional hierarchy of needs, we are told, the scrambler's priorities are inverted: self-fulfillment--instead of being at the bottom, after the satisfaction of creature needs--ranks first.) Stabilizers, on the other hand, are the traditionalists: they work hard, exhibit all kinds of loyalty to the organization, and frequently watch their flashier colleagues take the promotions (though the best among them are usually only one rung behind on the corporate ladder). Despite frequent friction between the two groups, Chapman maintains that ""symbiosis, not warfare, is their natural condition,"" and urges stabilizers to realize that scramblers need them for leverage. Some tips about specific ploys, but mostly ballyhoo heralding an old discovery.