Professional socialization and institutional change: German corporate leaders in transition

Abstract

Recent institutional approaches have granted actors more strategic space in coping with their structural environment, but they largely neglect to conceive actors as social entities, thereby reducing the relation between actors and institutions mostly to interaction effects. This article underscores the dialectical and mutually constitutive relation between actors and institutions by taking a more actor-centred perspective. Empirically, the article analyses the professional socialization of corporate leaders in Germany in the context of the changing face of German capitalism. Drawing on insights from the literature on social agency and the sociology of management, it is argued that the professional socialization of corporate leaders, which facilitated a more consensus orientation, persisted over a long period, but eroded after the 1980s. The more conflictual interpretation of institutions and economic relations by today's corporate leaders is not only linked to (internal and external) political and economic structural changes but also to the managers' new professional experience.