Social scientists are paying increasing attention to the business and financial elites: There’s a great need to understand who these elites are, what they do, and what makes them tick, as individuals but also as a class. By examining elite business schools, the institutions that train and prepare people to assume important leadership and decision-making positions in business, finance and related sectors, we may also learn how the economic elites are made. A key argument in this book is that elite schools are known to create powerful groups in society, offering them the intellectual and analytical means to act as leaders, but, most importantly, the social, moral and aesthetic skills that are deemed necessary to exercise power; in all essential respects elite schools consecrate people. By dominating much of higher education today, and by doing so in a way that creates and reproduces a market-based organization and control of society, elite business schools represent certain interests and ideologies that affect the lives of most people. In understanding how the modern economy is run, elite business schools, therefore, represent critical study objects. This book, based on an in-depth study of the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), offers a sociological analysis of the world of elite business schools. Specifically, this book examines the consecration of SSE’s students from a number of perspectives and in a number of situations, focusing on student union activities, school culture, faculty behavior, teaching, courses and alumni events, noting the symbolic importance of economics and particularly the school’s unique relation among the world’s business schools to the Nobel Prize. The book addresses the topics with regards to the sociology of elites, management education and organizational studies and will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students also interested in business history, higher education studies, and sociology of education.

The COVID-19 pandemic, the surge of populism, the climate crisis and many other destabilizing factors in our time, all point at the expectation of trustworthy knowledge and reliable organization devoted to knowledge production and dissemination. However, universities remain enmeshed in economic liberalization and ensuing cultural struggles where their funding, governance and practices reflect market imprints – even academic ideals such as originality, or social ideals such as relevance have been transformed into measurable units and thereby risk losing their historical sway. This predicament is the focus of this book. The book explores the rise of neo-liberalization in academic system in a highly unlikely place: Sweden, a country with a strong social democratic tradition and a long history of state regulation of higher education. As an advanced welfare state with a powerful labour movement and a large public sector, market ideals and practices have been carefully curtailed historically. This notwithstanding, a neoliberal university model has evolved there, reshaping notions of academic identities, institutional directions and notions of quality. This edited collection will be of value to researchers, academics and students with an interest in organizational studies, governance, management, higher education, sociology and politics.

Social scientists are paying increasing attention to the business and financial elites: There's a great need to understand who these elites are, what they do, and what makes them tick, as individuals but also as a class. By examining elite business schools, the institutions that train and prepare people to assume important leadership and decision-making positions in business, finance and related sectors, we may also learn how the economic elites are made. A key argument in this book is that elite schools are known to create powerful groups in society, offering them the intellectual and analytical means to act as leaders, but, most importantly, the social, moral and aesthetic skills that are deemed necessary to exercise power; in all essential respects elite schools consecrate people. By dominating much of higher education today, and by doing so in a way that creates and reproduces a market-based organization and control of society, elite business schools represent certain interests and ideologies that affect the lives of most people. In understanding how the modern economy is run, elite business schools, therefore, represent critical study objects. This book, based on an in-depth study of the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), offers a sociological analysis of the world of elite business schools. Specifically, this book examines the consecration of SSE's students from a number of perspectives and in a number of situations, focusing on student union activities, school culture, faculty behavior, teaching, courses and alumni events, noting the symbolic importance of economics and particularly the school's unique relation among the world's business schools to the Nobel Prize. The book addresses the topics with regards to the sociology of elites, management education and organizational studies and will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students also interested in business history, higher education studies, and sociology of education.

Across the traditional welfare states of Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada there has been increasing emphasis on 'activation' by the unemployed as a tool for fighting unemployment. The core idea of activation programmes is the integration and empowerment of jobseekers through active work-related measures rather than passive income support. However, the empirical evidence of the efficacy of activation programmes is far from conclusive and there have been no systematic studies of the effects of activation programmes on the lives of the unemployed people who come into contact with them. This book is based on a detailed ethnographic study of the highly praised Swedish rehabilitation organization Samhall. The result is a key volume for those working and studying within welfare, poverty, disability and special needs.

Today most countries rely on formally organized welfare programs - in some cases to the extent that they are labeled "welfare states". These programs, which have been constructed over the last decades, make up a larger national and international system of good intentions. Overall, it appears inconceivable to imagine "civilized society" without a comprehensive organizational system of social welfare. Social welfare has become a "holy cow" in many societies; an institutionalized aspect of modern life. But how does the institutionalization of social welfare occur through the concrete activities it enacts; and why does the institutionalization of social welfare appear to be so particularly successful in relation to other institutionalizing phenomena? These are central problems for any sociological analysis of contemporary society's organization and are the main locus of attention of this book. Holmqvist explores how a social welfare organization becomes a self-evident phenomenon by "medicalizing" its environment: a way of "solving" social problems by viewing and treating them as medical problems. This study generates new understandings of how institutionalization of organizations comes about and contributes fresh insight to the area of social welfare policies.

During the past two decades, corporate management has come to take an active role in health promotion programming for employees, offering health education, screenings, therapy, and even leisure initiatives. However, little attention has been given to how contemporary worksite health programs in fact blur the traditional distinction between work and private life. This has resulted in that little research on the other side of the work-health nexus: how employers factor health considerations into workforce management and productivity control. With the advancement of "work-site health promotion" in contemporary organizations, Holmqvist and Maravelias argue that this narrow focus, and the typical uncritical standpoint towards initiatives which are taken in the name of employees' health, is inadequate. At a more fundamental level, the advancement of work-site health promotion may be a sign of a new or altered corporate health ethic: in contrast to the old corporate health ethic that was narrow and specific to the workplace, the new corporate health ethic appears to judge the 'whole employee' and especially what the whole employee may become; the risks one faces and the abilities one has to shoulder the responsibility for developing into a real corporate value. The authors suggest that health experts' work is closely aligned with problems relating to the general management of organizations. Through a focused appraisal of this central albeit neglected occupational group in management studies, this book tries to explore and understand in some depth situations and experiences that are of general interest and concern in our society.

Across the traditional welfare states of Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada there has been increasing emphasis on 'activation' by the unemployed as a tool for fighting unemployment. The core idea of activation programmes is the integration and empowerment of jobseekers through active work-related measures rather than passive income support. However, the empirical evidence of the efficacy of activation programmes is far from conclusive and there have been no systematic studies of the effects of activation programmes on the lives of the unemployed people who come into contact with them. This book is based on a detailed ethnographic study of the highly praised Swedish rehabilitation organization Samhall. The result is a key volume for those working and studying within welfare, poverty, disability and special needs.

Today most countries rely on formally organized welfare programs - in some cases to the extent that they are labeled "welfare states". These programs, which have been constructed over the last decades, make up a larger national and international system of good intentions. Overall, it appears inconceivable to imagine "civilized society" without a comprehensive organizational system of social welfare. Social welfare has become a "holy cow" in many societies; an institutionalized aspect of modern life. But how does the institutionalization of social welfare occur through the concrete activities it enacts; and why does the institutionalization of social welfare appear to be so particularly successful in relation to other institutionalizing phenomena? These are central problems for any sociological analysis of contemporary society's organization and are the main locus of attention of this book. Holmqvist explores how a social welfare organization becomes a self-evident phenomenon by "medicalizing" its environment: a way of "solving" social problems by viewing and treating them as medical problems. This study generates new understandings of how institutionalization of organizations comes about and contributes fresh insight to the area of social welfare policies.

Organizations are under constant pressure to be ambidextrous. They must be able to exploit existing processes, routines and systems at the same time as they must engage in exploration through playfulness, relaxed control and experimentation. We know little about the human costs and challenges of ambidexterity. In this volume we explore the impact of ambidextrous organizations on individuals' working lives. The authors analyze how employees are required to follow routines at the same time as they are expected to break these routines. They also explore how the individual dilemmas of ambidexterity play out in the lives of precarious work, online communities, management consultants, workers in the automotive industry, and consumers of pop-management books in the US. The result is a rich and fascinating picture of individuals whose working lives are made up of a continued tension between the quest to be exploitative and explorative.

During the past two decades, corporate management has come to take an active role in health promotion programming for employees, offering health education, screenings, therapy, and even leisure initiatives. However, little attention has been given to how contemporary worksite health programs in fact blur the traditional distinction between work and private life. This has resulted in that little research on the other side of the work-health nexus: how employers factor health considerations into workforce management and productivity control.

With the advancement of "work-site health promotion" in contemporary organizations, Holmqvist and Maravelias argue that this narrow focus, and the typical uncritical standpoint towards initiatives which are taken in the name of employees' health, is inadequate. At a more fundamental level, the advancement of work-site health promotion may be a sign of a new or altered corporate health ethic: in contrast to the old corporate health ethic that was narrow and specific to the workplace, the new corporate health ethic appears to judge the 'whole employee' and especially what the whole employee may become; the risks one faces and the abilities one has to shoulder the responsibility for developing into a real corporate value. The authors suggest that health experts' work is closely aligned with problems relating to the general management of organizations. Through a focused appraisal of this central albeit neglected occupational group in management studies, this book tries to explore and understand in some depth situations and experiences that are of general interest and concern in our society.

All around the world there are elite suburban communities: Palo Alto, California, and Greenwich, Connecticut, in the U.S.; Paris's Neuilly; and Oxshott outside London. These wealthy suburbs are home to the economic and social elites who work in the world's global cities. Stockholm's suburb Djursholm is one such place. It is full of large houses, winding lanes, and is surrounded by a beautiful landscape. Its residents prize physical fitness, healthy eating, fine art, and education. Despite Sweden's reputation for egalitarianism, Djursholm is representative of global mechanisms of privilege and its perpetuation. Leader Communities is the sociologist Mikael Holmqvist's term for places like Djursholm: the communities where elites choose to live, socialize with other elites, and, most importantly, form families and raise their children into future elites. Such neighborhoods consecrate inhabitants into leaders-that is, they offer their residents a social environment that imbues people with a sense of social and moral elevation. By idealizing their residents, leader communities' allegedly superior lifestyle and character act as a principle of distinction and legitimation. Holmqvist calls this a consecracy-a society that leads by means of its aura, brightness, and radiance, allowing the privileged to pose as a moral vanguard. Leaders are made-not born-by the culture, history, traditions, ceremonies, rituals, and institutions of the place. Based on a comprehensive five-year ethnographic study, this book is a community study of Djursholm in which the author ventures inside the world of the elite to explore the mechanics of social interaction and power. Leader Communities introduces vital new concepts to the study and understanding of contemporary elites and offers a troubling analysis of the moral, social, and political consequences of their aspirations to lead societies.

All around the world there are elite suburban communities: Palo Alto, California, and Greenwich, Connecticut, in the U.S.; Paris's Neuilly; and Oxshott outside London. These wealthy suburbs are home to the economic and social elites who work in the world's global cities. Stockholm's suburb Djursholm is one such place. It is full of large houses, winding lanes, and is surrounded by a beautiful landscape. Its residents prize physical fitness, healthy eating, fine art, and education. Despite Sweden's reputation for egalitarianism, Djursholm is representative of global mechanisms of privilege and its perpetuation. Leader Communities is the sociologist Mikael Holmqvist's term for places like Djursholm: the communities where elites choose to live, socialize with other elites, and, most importantly, form families and raise their children into future elites. Such neighborhoods consecrate inhabitants into leaders-that is, they offer their residents a social environment that imbues people with a sense of social and moral elevation. By idealizing their residents, leader communities' allegedly superior lifestyle and character act as a principle of distinction and legitimation. Holmqvist calls this a consecracy-a society that leads by means of its aura, brightness, and radiance, allowing the privileged to pose as a moral vanguard. Leaders are made-not born-by the culture, history, traditions, ceremonies, rituals, and institutions of the place. Based on a comprehensive five-year ethnographic study, this book is a community study of Djursholm in which the author ventures inside the world of the elite to explore the mechanics of social interaction and power. Leader Communities introduces vital new concepts to the study and understanding of contemporary elites and offers a troubling analysis of the moral, social, and political consequences of their aspirations to lead societies.