How does one become a member of an elite profession? Managing Elites examines how elites-in-training contest, rationalize, and ultimately embrace their dominant positions in society. Using interviews with law and MBA students, the author shows that becoming elite is not a straightforward process without tensions. Successful socialization outcomes--employment in large corporate law firms or prominent investment banks and consulting firms--require both accomodation and resistance to ideologies about achievement and meritocracy.
Using evidence from extensive fieldwork, Isabelle Werenfels explores the relationship between elite dynamics and strategies and the lack of profound political change in Algeria after 1995, when the country’s military rulers returned to electoral processes.
Challenges the conventional view that the party-state structure creates a monolithic political elite in PR China, allowing readers to think about Chinese politics in a different perspective using an institutional approach Unlike existing research on Chinese elites this book relies upon advance statistical data Statistics are based on 1588 top Chinese leaders making this book the most extensive and up-to-date biographical data set in elite studies
Over the last twenty years or so there has been a sharp increase in interest from national sports federations and governments in the development of effective elite sport systems, particularly focused on achieving success in the summer and winter Olympic Games. Many countries now have publicly funded elite sports strategies which provide specialist facilities and support staff and often provide direct financial support for athletes. These developments have stimulated academic interest in describing the elite sport systems, analysing the processes by which policy is established and evaluating the impact of these policies on elite athlete success. Far less attention has been placed on the operation of the elite sports systems and on how the system interfaces with the athlete. The aim of this book is to refocus attention on the management and operation of systems designed to deliver elite success. The book draws on the theoretical literature in implementation, organisation theory, leadership and complexity. This provides an initial context for analysis and a stimulus for theory development around key questions such as: How do coaches manage their relationship with athletes? How does talent identification operate in practice? Do coaches fulfil the role of gatekeeper between the athlete and other elements of the sports system e.g. sports science support? How do managers, support staff and athletes interpret the expectations placed on them? The first part of the book focuses on aspects of the effectiveness of elite sports systems and the second explores aspects of systems operation focused on the interface between the athlete and the sport development system, and cross-cutting themes within the book include the management of talent identification and coach development. This is illuminating reading for any student, researcher or practitioner working in sport development, sport management or sports coaching.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The groundbreaking investigation of how the global elite's efforts to "change the world" preserve the status quo and obscure their role in causing the problems they later seek to solve. An essential read for understanding some of the egregious abuses of power that dominate today’s news. "Impassioned.... Entertaining reading.” —The Washington Post Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can—except ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. They rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; they lavishly reward “thought leaders” who redefine “change” in ways that preserve the status quo; and they constantly seek to do more good, but never less harm. Giridharadas asks hard questions: Why, for example, should our gravest problems be solved by the unelected upper crust instead of the public institutions it erodes by lobbying and dodging taxes? His groundbreaking investigation has already forced a great, sorely needed reckoning among the world’s wealthiest and those they hover above, and it points toward an answer: Rather than rely on scraps from the winners, we must take on the grueling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions and truly changing the world—a call to action for elites and everyday citizens alike.
In all periods of time, there is a perceived shortage of qualified, credible, and robust leadership skills. At the same time, what is regarded as skilled leadership is contingent on economic, political, institutional, and cultural conditions specific for a period of time or a local setting. Leadership in the era of managerial capitalism was focused on planning and administration, and was seated in large-scale, divisionalized corporations. In the 1970s, this economic model started to wane and leadership was advanced as the solution to a series of economic and social concerns, now being a matter of meaning-making in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity. With the expansion of the finance industry and the deregulation of finance markets in the 1990s and in the new millennium, yet another leadership model increasingly prioritized economic value creation. In parallel to the economic, political and institutional changes, the idea of leadership has been strongly informed by new ideas about individualism and masculinity, adding to the understanding of leadership as what is anchored in widespread social beliefs about for example healthy life styles, the virtues of physical exercise, and novel gender relations. Aimed at scholars, researchers, students and policy makers in the fields of Leadership, Management History and Organizational Theory; Leadership Varieties examines predominant ideas about the qualities and virtues of leadership in a historical and cultural perspective.
A powerful and original argument that traces the roots of our present crisis of authority to an unlikely source: the meritocracy. Over the past decade, Americans watched in bafflement and rage as one institution after another – from Wall Street to Congress, the Catholic Church to corporate America, even Major League Baseball – imploded under the weight of corruption and incompetence. In the wake of the Fail Decade, Americans have historically low levels of trust in their institutions; the social contract between ordinary citizens and elites lies in tatters. How did we get here? With Twilight of the Elites, Christopher Hayes offers a radically novel answer. Since the 1960s, as the meritocracy elevated a more diverse group of men and women into power, they learned to embrace the accelerating inequality that had placed them near the very top. Their ascension heightened social distance and spawned a new American elite--one more prone to failure and corruption than any that came before it. Mixing deft political analysis, timely social commentary, and deep historical understanding, Twilight of the Elites describes how the society we have come to inhabit – utterly forgiving at the top and relentlessly punitive at the bottom – produces leaders who are out of touch with the people they have been trusted to govern. Hayes argues that the public's failure to trust the federal government, corporate America, and the media has led to a crisis of authority that threatens to engulf not just our politics but our day-to-day lives. Upending well-worn ideological and partisan categories, Hayes entirely reorients our perspective on our times. Twilight of the Elites is the defining work of social criticism for the post-bailout age.
Elite youth sport competitions have increased significantly in number in recent years, with the Youth Olympic Games representing the high point of this phenomenon. This book examines the global context within which elite youth sport has emerged and continues to grow. It explores elite youth sport policy across fifteen countries, in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia, addressing the questions of how youth talent development is organised and why elite youth sport has become so popular. Taking a comparative global perspective, the book analyses the growth in more systematic approaches to young athlete development and the increasing emphasis on early talent identification. It discusses the attitude of stakeholders (such as NGBs, governments and sponsors) towards elite youth sport, while also considering how young elite athletes’ interests are protected and how the growth in elite youth sport affects a sport’s development strategy. Written by a team of internationally renowned researchers, Elite Youth Sport Policy and Management: A comparative analysis is fascinating reading for all students, scholars, managers, policy-makers and coaches with an interest in youth sport, elite sport development, talent identification and sports policy.
How does the elite continue to affect the evolution of local communities in the developing region of former Sovietized Europe? This book is concerned with the issue of local leadership in the countries of East-Central Europe. It is an attempt to examine, with a comparative method, the profile and the role of the local political elites (members of the Municipal Councils) in six towns in six transitional democracies of the region.
This book represents an alternative perspective on international elite sport systems. It focusses on the embedded multi-level nature of leadership, and the scope that this might give for degrees of leadership autonomy and discretion. The chapters show how mechanisms of leadership on different levels interact. The nature and mix of leadership mechanisms reflect values and expectations related to specific political, normative and commercial sport contexts. Three introductory chapters outline key elements of these dimensions of elite sport contexts. Seven empirical cases illustrate how national contexts facilitate and constrain leadership practices, related to specific sports across Russia, China, Ghana, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway and the US. The final chapter discusses embedded multi-level leadership from a comparative perspective. Based on the countries covered, the book distinguishes between three groups: state-dominated systems, state-elite sport partnership and countries with a passive state, with no state intervention. This book is important reading for researchers and students with an interest in sport management, sport development, sport policy and sport governance, as well as for policy-makers, performance directors and managers working in elite sport.
