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Niklas Altermark

Niklas Altermark

Associate professor

Niklas Altermark

Shaping Civil Society Leaders: Horizontal and Vertical Boundary Work in Swedish Leadership Training Programmes

Author

  • Håkan Johansson
  • Niklas Altermark
  • Simon Stattin

Summary, in English

Civil society leadership training programmes are a new phenomenon, and they are often overlooked by civil society scholarship despite being linked to the professionalisation of the sector. In this article, we examine 14 Swedish leadership programmes in order to identify leadership ideals in the sector. Drawing on the notion of ‘symbolic boundaries’, we argue that leadership programmes produce horizontal boundaries in relation to other societal sectors and vertical boundaries between leaders of the sector and other members. Together, these symbolic boundaries form a leadership ideal that detaches leaders from their organisation and internal democratic processes, instead depicting leadership as a question of personal characteristics and values. Leaders in the sector need to be authentic and to anchor their leadership in the personal values they hold. Theoretically, our analytical model may prove useful in the study of other empirical phenomena in civil society.

Department/s

  • Civil Society and Social Movements
  • School of Social Work
  • Department of Political Science

Publishing year

2023

Language

English

Pages

1025-1035

Publication/Series

Voluntas

Volume

34

Issue

5

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Political Science
  • Social Work

Keywords

  • Elites
  • Capital
  • Bourdieu
  • Boundary work
  • Civil Society
  • Leadership
  • Training

Status

Published

Project

  • Civil society elites? Comparing elite composition, reproduction, integration and contestation in European civil societies
  • Civil society elites? The composition, reproduction and integration of elite groups in Swedish civil society

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0957-8765