Modifying the Discourse of Elitism: How Egalitarianism Can Reduce Status Anxiety

This paper explores how the discourse of elitism, which strongly shapes the identities of management consultants, gets modified in the course of a career change. Based on 30 life story interviews with ex-consultants the paper illustrates how previous consultants continue, protect or appropriate the discourses of elitism when constructing their identities in a new working context, namely by preserving a sense of superiority over the other. This, in turn can result in the perpetuation of status anxiety, that is, the fear of losing one’s social position in a hierarchy. The paper also shows, however, how the discourse of elitism can get replaced by a discourse of egalitarianism, thereby indicating a potential ‘way out’ of status anxiety and the societal pressures to be elitist, superior and exceptional.