No Peace,No Rest: Paying More Attention to Actors at the Wealth–Power Nexus

Abstract

Actors at the wealth–power nexus—oligarchs, cronies, plutocrats, and the like—have become increasingly consequential in the global economic, political, and organizational landscapes. Yet, we know little about them, especially the processes by which they gain wealth or power, and then transform one into the other. I suggest that one reason for our limited understanding is that we are prisoners of Aristotle’s conceptualization of them as groups. To break out of that prison, a turn to the individual level seems warranted. This turn opens up new theoretical perspectives that focus on individuals and their processes, including effectuation, process research, biology and neuroscience, and arts and literature. These perspectives put individual-level processes front and center in the uncertain contexts in which these actors create and transform wealth and power.