Professional socialization and institutional change: German corporate leaders in transition

Abstract

Recent institutional approaches have granted actors more strategic space in coping with their structural environment, but they largely neglect to conceive actors as social entities, thereby reducing the relation between actors and institutions mostly to interaction effects. This article underscores the dialectical and mutually constitutive relation between actors and institutions by taking a more actor-centred perspective. Empirically, the article analyses the professional socialization of corporate leaders in Germany in the context of the changing face of German capitalism. Drawing on insights from the literature on social agency and the sociology of management, it is argued that the professional socialization of corporate leaders, which facilitated a more consensus orientation, persisted over a long period, but eroded after the 1980s. The more conflictual interpretation of institutions and economic relations by today's corporate leaders is not only linked to (internal and external) political and economic structural changes but also to the managers' new professional experience.

Top managers' career variety and time to the top

“…This is a somewhat interesting finding, as the "traditional" German chimney or mountain climber careers (as described by Davoine & Ravasi, 2013), rather represented by top managers in Cluster 2 (at least in terms of functional and country variety), seem to be increasingly complemented by top managers of a different, more international or even global profile. The existence of Cluster 4 resonates with the results of Freye (2015), who attests top managers in larger German firms a shift from pure chimney careers towards more boundaryless careers-at least in terms of the number of prior employers. When concentrating on the subgroup of CEOs and CFOs, the following can be observed: out of the 59 top managers in the CEO or the CFO role, 58 (98%) are male and only one is female (2%).…”

Corporate social responsibility as management idea: Between universal applicability and context dependency

“…To start with, there has to be a (perceived) management problem – a gap between expectations of organizations and organizational outcomes – that requires a solution (Lawrence et al, 2002). Any such solution however, does not come about out of the blue (Bodrožić and Adler, 2018); rather, there is a supply side to be considered here, often played by consulting firms (Videla, 2005), business media (Ahonen, 2009) or corporate leaders (Freye, 2015), who can persuade (other) managers to apply their preferred solution.…”

Leadership, Employee and Competency Development for Better Talent Management in the Face of the Dynamics of Environmental Changes

“…An important basis for the modern understanding of situational leadership are the studies by Tannenbaum and Schmidt (1958). This approach is particularly valuable not only in the identification of leadership competences, but also in the analysis and diagnosis of organizational conditions shaping leaders in the enterprise (Bryman, Collinson, Grint, Jackson, and Uhl-Bien, 2011; Freye, 2015;Tourish, 2013).…”

“…), Leadership, employee and competency development for better talent management in the face of the dynamics of environmental changes (pp. [99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111]. Wroclaw: Publishing House of Wroclaw University of Economics and Business.…”