National models for making and legitimating elites

The apparent triumph of economic rationality, the globalization of firms and the construction of the European Union all suggest that the ways of making top leaders in big German, British and French companies should be converging since these firms must cope with the same constraints. This argument, however appealing, overlooks the social dimension of the making of elites. A comparison of the heads of the 200 biggest British, French and German firms brings to light three contrasting national models for producing legitimate authority and thus sheds light on three quite different types of business elites. This is a far cry from a single European model, far indeed given that each of these three models for the making of a business elite has roots in each country’s historical and social ‘logics’. This fact endows these models with stability and makes it quite hard for a European model to even gradually emerge.