Emotional styles of power: corporate leaders in Finnish business media

Abstract

Drawing from a growing body of research that focuses on emotions as social and cultural phenomena, this article examines how publicly performed emotions can be employed in the exercise of power. The article uses William Reddy’s ideas on emotional regimes. A qualitative analysis of Finnish business magazine Talouselämä tracks how corporate leaders have performed publicly in Finland from 1940 to 2005. I suggest that corporate capitalism developed an emotional regime of enthusiastic individualism, which challenged the previous regime of paternal managerialism. The article demonstrates how business media such as Talouselämä provided an emotional refuge that became a public platform through which rising corporate sectors could formulate the new emotional regime. The mediated performances of corporate leaders became rituals that borrowed from the affect economy of social movements and fuelled the rise of the new capitalism.