Consecration and meritocracy in elite business schools: The case of a Swedish student union

Abstract

Sociologists are paying increasing attention to the business and financial elites that control today's global economy; indeed, there's a great need to understand who these elites are, what they do, and what makes them tick, as individuals, and as a class. But we also need to understand how the economic elites aremade in the current social and economic system, and one significant way of doing this, is by examining elite business schools, that is, the institutions that aim to train and prepare people to assume important leadership and decision‐making positions in business, finance and related sectors of critical importance to the management of modern capitalism. Based on the notion of consecration, I empirically examine how the student union of Sweden's premier business school, The Stockholm School of Economics, offers its members a learning environment partly separated from the school, and how this semi‐independent organization contributes to making undergraduate students socially, morally and esthetically meritorious for elite jobs in primarily management consulting and finance; a process that is largely shaped by corporate actors that participate formally and informally in the student union activities. The paper contributes to the sociological literature on business schools and higher education and elites, both theoretically through the twin notions of meritocracy and consecration, and empirically through its unique focus on student union activities in an elite business school setting.