The Role of Internal Labour Markets and Social Networks in the Recruitment of Top Managers in Finnish Manufacturing Firms, 1900-1975

2022

Management Learning

This study explores how the adoption of management ideas is conditioned by wider macro-level mentalities that are not company based but that instead reflect professionally or nationally rooted ways of managing. Drawing from studies on professional mentalities and practices, we study Finnish top executives working in globally operating multinational corporations in the metal and forestry industries, showing how, starting in the 1980s, they adopted new management practices during the rise of globalisation, market liberalisation and post-Fordism. Altogether, a traditional engineering mentality strongly conditioned the dissemination of new management ideas, which needed to adapt with the existing mentality. As a result, we find three ways of management idea dissemination: (a) new ideas had to fit in with the old business elite mentality, (b) new ideas were side-lined and belittled by the old mentality and (c) new ideas were smuggled into management by reframing and widening the old mentality. By extending Guillén’s work on elite mentalities, the study contributes to the research on management ideas by exploring the role of societal macro-level mentalities in management learning, highlighting their role in times of societal transformation.

Section: Business Managers’ Mentalities In the Macro Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of professional elites in shaping management practice: How the old mentalities condition the adoption of new management ideas

Seeck

2022

Management Learning

“…Since the Second World War, the wealthy business elites of Finland have been actively engaged in the making of the Nordic welfare model (Lijphart, 2012: 166; Vesa et al, 2018). Since the 1980s, however, market liberalisation and globalisation have transformed the companies in which the executives typically work: large companies have internationalised and undergone major structural transformations, with many becoming global leaders in their fields (Fellman, 2003; Hjerppe and Larsson, 2006; Kantola et al, 2019; Lilja and Tainio, 2006). Thus, one can ask whether the wealthy are developing identities or cultures which distance them from the rest of society, and this article suggests that a focus on their emotional expression provides insight into how their relation to the wider society is evolving.…”

Section: Wealth Elites In Fluxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gloomy at the Top: How the Wealthiest 0.1% Feel about the Rest

2020

Sociology

Growing inequalities have prompted research on the wealthiest groups and their cohesive practices and ideologies. This article suggests that emotional expression – how the members of the wealthy upper class feel about themselves and the rest of society – provides a way to examine their position in society. Drawing from interviews with business executives who belong to the richest 0.1% in Finland and to their society’s power elites, I argue that just as low-income groups feel resentful towards more affluent groups, the wealthy also harbour resentment towards more disadvantaged groups. The wealthy executives create an emotionally laden self-justification – a deep story – in which they feel positively about themselves but assign negative feelings to other classes. In this narrative, the optimistic business elites thus become gloomy societal elites, who build empathy walls against the less advantaged groups even in Finland, one of the world’s most equal countries.

“…However, in recent decades, market globalisation has transformed all the companies in these sectors (Lilja and Tainio, 2006). In the 1960s and 1970s, these companies (or their predecessors in the case of companies that merged) expanded heavily into foreign markets, and amid financial liberalisation during the 1980s, foreign investments in Finnish firms grew steadily (Fellman, 2003; Lilja and Tainio, 2006). Consequently, these companies experienced major structural transformations.…”

Section: Case Study: Affective Governmentality In Heavy Industriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Affect in governmentality: Top executives managing the affective milieu of market liberalisation

Seeck²,

Mannevuo

2019

Organization

This article explores the role of affect in governmentality and develops the concept of the ‘affective milieu’ to better understand liberal forms of managerial control in market environments. Taking Foucault’s writings on consent, security and technologies of self as a vantage point, we suggest that the regimes of governmentality are both rational and affective milieus and propose that the Spinozan–Deleuzian affect theory provides an entry point for exploring how regimes of governmentality operate as affective milieus. The Spinozan–Deleuzian affect theory helps in understanding affective complexities and attempts to create affective alliances in governmentality. Elucidating this point, we explore how top executives at globally operating paper and metal companies entered a new affective milieu when going through market liberalisation. The affective milieu oscillates between the dangers and promises of the market. Using the notion of priming, we analyse how the top executives use the affective threats and promises of the opening markets and how they attempted to develop managerial techniques to incite and orient employees in the new milieu.