Thin political markets in accounting and beyond: Lessons for leadership education

Abstract

Following financialization, an understanding of what it implies to be a shareholder, based on the shareholder value perception, has emerged. As this shareholder value perception spreads internationally, it clashes with traditional perceptions. In this paper, we apply the language developed by Bourdieu, to a Swedish public debate on equal treatment of shareholders in connection with the regulation reform of the Swedish market for corporate control. By using this conceptual framework based on Bourdieu, we overcome the difficulties from simultaneously describing a global development and a national persistence. We conclude that in Sweden, local institutional investors ally with international institutional investors to enhance their positions in the restricted field of Swedish corporate control. Shareholder value is then used by these local actors as an argument to strengthen their position. At the same time some of the controlling shareholders depart from their traditional position as industrial entrepreneurs and embrace a more financial approach to ownership, thereby changing both the power positions and the capital, in Bourdieu's sense, of the field.