Social class habitus in top management teams: the functioning of the corporate elite tested by social origins[Habitus de classe dans le comité de direction, le fonctionnement de l’élite dirigeante à l’épreuve des origines sociales]

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.