The Strength of Difference

Bosses and managers from atypical backgrounds have succeeded in avoiding socially pre-determined outcomes by turning their differences into resources. This did not, however, mean that they became "normal". They are leaders, but they remain excluded from convened social positions.This distance leads them to listen, to look upon, and to analyse their environments, their pasts and their relations with others much more than "normal" people do. Furthermore, this distance facilitates entrepreneurial risk-taking and the creation of networks, complicity and solidarity. It requires the mobilization of extraordinary social intelligence.This book describes the processes through which stigma can be mastered, if not forgotten. It also explains that the position of outsiders, in the broadest meaning of the term, translates the social experiences of all those who belong to several worlds, and who find themselves condemned simultaneously to engagement and detachment.

About the Author

Norbert Alter is a Professor of Sociology at Paris Dauphine University, France. He specialises in the sociology of organisations and favours an empirically grounded understanding of the world of business and the social bonds that develop there.