Social class habitus in top management teams: the functioning of the corporate elite tested by social origins
Keywords:
top management team, social origin, habitus, management team behavioral integrationAbstract
The continued attention given to corporate elites since the early 1980s has led scholars
to focus on many of the personal characteristics of leaders in organizations. Despite its
important place in the social sciences, however, social class as a factor in diversity at the top
of the organizational hierarchy has not been well studied. Adopting a qualitative method, this
study combines Bourdieusian and sociocognitive approaches to social class with insights from
upper echelon theory to examine the ways in which social origins influence the mechanisms of
behavioral integration of the executive team. By interpreting the life stories of nineteen managers
from a variety of social classes, we can characterize the practices of leaders according to
their social origins in an unprecedented way and with the support of quotes. This research
also elucidates how these practices, in the presence of a variety of social origins within the
management body, lead to a perfectible collaboration in which exchanges are limited and
decision-making is limited in scope. While empirically clarifying how habitus evolves in the
event of social mobility for managers from modest backgrounds, these results also demonstrate
how each member of a management body, regardless of his or her social background, can
become aware of the impact on the collective of his or her perceptions and ways of operating
on a day-to-day basis.
