In this paper, I examine how the King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, systematically consecrates the nation's business and corporate elites who have come to dominate Swedish society during the last decades concomitant with a fundamental transformation from traditional social-democracy to neoliberalism, that is, a society characterized by the logic of corporations and markets. By promoting the business and corporate elites, the King contributes to strengthening their status and legitimacy in relation to other groups, while at the same time he reproduces his own elite status and image as a “corporate king.” In order to examine this dual elite legitimation, I have studied three major official duties in the King's official role as Sweden's head of state: (a) the awarding of the most prestigious royal medals to corporate leaders; (b) the invitation of these elites to official royal dinners; and (c) state visits, whereby the corporate elites are given a peculiar status in relation to other elite groups. Based on this unique data on the activities of a living monarch, I refute the common assumption among sociologists today that royals, and particularly monarchs, are powerless figures and therefore irrelevant as study objects. By consecrating business and its leaders, monarchs contribute to legitimizing neoliberalism, thus strengthening its hegemony, as well as their own standing. Hence, they are not only symbolic figures, but exercise real power as well.

One group of elites that often escapes attention among sociologists are royals, who seem to be regarded as uninteresting and irrelevant study objects for the analysis of elites' reproduction and power in contemporary society. Still, as suggested by, for instance, the death of the British Queen Elizabeth II in 2022 and the installation of the Danish King Frederik X in 2024, royals enjoy extraordinary attention among the general public and media, which testifies to their potentially important social, moral and political functions and roles. Based on an extensive examination of the longest reigning monarch in the world today, the Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf, I suggest how he, through media, has been constructed as 'Sweden's leader'; by idealizing such neoliberal virtues as activity, entrepreneurship, positive thinking, self-management and similar expressions of 'leadership'. A key concept for my analysis of the fabrication of the King is 'image-making', which derives from Ervin Goffman's work on the 'presentation of self'. Essentially, the King aspires to be seen as a role model in contemporary Sweden, a country that has become all the more market-oriented during the last 50 years, which is critical to understanding his legitimacy, and hence ability to exercise power.

In this paper, I examine how the formally powerless Swedish King consecrates neoliberalism by promoting the idea of ‘leadership’ in his role as the Honorary Chairman of the World Scout Foundation, a global organization dedicated to educating and fostering young people all over the world. ‘Leadership’, which stresses people’s individual responsibility, entrepreneurship, activity and productivity, and positive thinking, is a critical component of neoliberalism and the market-based society, regarded both as a political ideology, and a way of life. The paper has two contributions to sociology: First, I manifest the status of monarchs as contemporary elites, that is, powerful actors with unproportionate access to economic, social, cultural, communicative and organizational resources. Second, I propose how elites’ consecration is not only limited to sanctifying certain groups of people/classes in contemporary society, but include the social and moral elevation of ideologies, ideas and human capabilities as well.

Sociologists theare paying increasing attention to the business and financial elites that control today's global economy; indeed, there's a great need to understand who these elites are, what they do, and what makes m tick, as individuals, and as a class. But we also need to understand how the economic elites aremade in the current social and economic system, and one significant way of doing this, is by examining elite business schools, that is, the institutions that aim to train and prepare people to assume important leadership and decision-making positions in business, finance and related sectors of critical importance to the management of modern capitalism. Based on the notion of consecration, I empirically examine how the student union of Sweden's premier business school, The Stockholm School of Economics, offers its members a learning environment partly separated from the school, and how this semi-independent organization contributes to making undergraduate students socially, morally and esthetically meritorious for elite jobs in primarily management consulting and finance; a process that is largely shaped by corporate actors that participate formally and informally in the student union activities. The paper contributes to the sociological literature on business schools and higher education and elites, both theoretically through the twin notions of meritocracy and consecration, and empirically through its unique focus on student union activities in an elite business school setting. 

A critical notion in contemporary neoliberal society is “employability”, i.e., the set of skills, competencies and abilities that make an individual able to compete successfully on national and international labour markets. As is well-known, one of the most important instruments for creating employable persons is higher education, i.e. education offered by universities and similar academic institutions. Universities have for long time been expected to be “relevant” by making students well adapted to societal demands and requirements; in other words, producing “employable students” has always been a critical mission, not only in the narrow, vocational sense but also in the behavioural and aesthetic meaning of the word. As a testimony to this, modern universities have gradually embraced a corporate model for managing its operations, for instance, by implementing “performance management” indicators for evaluating faculty, and by offering students courses that stress the development of social rather than intellectual abilities that are said to be critical for their employability. The corporate ethos that has come to define society more and more has also come to colonize the university world. The market-liberal development of universities can most vividly be seen in the exceptional growth of management education offered by universities or independent business schools, where tomorrow's corporate elites are being educated and trained. In many ways, business schools have come to dominate higher education, not only in terms of the number of students being graduated but also ideologically: business schools seem to offer a version of higher education that is relevant for today's demands and can in this respect be seen as “model institutions”. As a result, the ways business students are constructed and socialized therefore constitute an interesting area of examination. In this chapter, the author critically examines how students at Sweden's premier business school, the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), are made employable for elite jobs in Swedish and international industry. The SSE is Sweden's only private university and is sometimes described as a model institution for how all higher education should be conducted in the country. Relative to other universities in Sweden, the SSE is a “free” institution, without any strong formal bonds to the state, which is said to promote an ability to swiftly adapt to circumstances and offer their students a “timely” education, resulting in a high degree of competitiveness. Indeed, the SSE has close connections to the corporate world that offers the institution guidance in how to promote student employability, and can boost excellent records in making their students attractive to elite employers, even in the public sector.

'Elite communities' are the areas where the wealthy, and even 'superrich', live, socialize and raise their children as future economic and financial elites; they are the places where a few lead socially and economically privileged lives. Earlier studies have concentrated on the inner dynamics of these settings, focusing on the way residents are constructed and socialized as elites through their social, communicative and aesthetic abilities that are perceived as exemplary in contemporary neoliberal society. In this paper, we broaden the perspective, by exploring how these areas contribute to polarization, that is, how they generate distinctions based on money, morals and manners that are peculiar to neoliberalism's idealization of 'entrepreneurship', 'self-management', 'leadership' and the pursuit of an 'active lifestyle'. Our data come from two major ethnographic studies: one conducted between 2010 and 2015 of Sweden's wealthiest community, Djursholm, that is populated by the country's business and financial elites; the other conducted between 2016 and 2019 of three of Australia's most prestigious and economically privileged suburbs, Toorak (Melbourne), Mosman (Sydney) and Cottesloe (Perth).

The COVID-19 pandemic, the surge of populism, the climate crisis and many other destabilizing factors in our time, all point at the expectation of trustworthy knowledge and reliable organization devoted to knowledge production and dissemination. However, universities remain enmeshed in economic liberalization and ensuing cultural struggles where their funding, governance and practices reflect market imprints – even academic ideals such as originality, or social ideals such as relevance have been transformed into measurable units and thereby risk losing their historical sway. This predicament is the focus of this book.

The book explores the rise of neo-liberalization in academic system in a highly unlikely place: Sweden, a country with a strong social democratic tradition and a long history of state regulation of higher education. As an advanced welfare state with a powerful labour movement and a large public sector, market ideals and practices have been carefully curtailed historically. This notwithstanding, a neoliberal university model has evolved there, reshaping notions of academic identities, institutional directions and notions of quality. This edited collection will be of value to researchers, academics and students with an interest in organizational studies, governance, management, higher education, sociology and politics.