More managerial control within the corporation

more managerial control within the corporation compared to other partners, and they represent the
Turkish branch in the global organization.
For looking at their lifestyle, I took into account four capitals which are economic,
cultural, social, and symbolic capitals, in line with Bourdieu’s model. Following Bourdieu
(1984), I took occupation, which is a variable that I know for the whole group, as the main
determinant of economic capital. As I learned the income level for each managerial level through
my contacts with junior level employees, this information has been sufficient for me to a large
extent for positioning them in terms of economic capital. The income level for senior managers is
around USD 100,000, for partners USD 200,000, and for senior partners around USD 500,000.
Taking into consideration their occupational positions and income levels, I observed that these
managers can be positioned at the upper class in terms of economic capital, as they get high
salaries, own houses in wealthy districts of İ stanbul, and have luxurious cars.
For cultural capital, first, I asked the managers the schools from which they graduated,
beginning from primary school, as I wanted to see whether they went to private or public schools.
All the managers I talked to graduated from public primary schools and most of them also
graduated from public high schools. All of them got their undergraduate degrees from managerial
and administrative areas (business administration, economics, and public administration) from the
top public universities of Turkey (Bogazici University, Middle East Technical University, Ankara
University, and İ stanbul University). Additionally, three of them got their master’s degrees from
the universities in the US and one from a Turkish university, all in business related areas. The
parents of most of these managers did not have high education. Although they are the children of
relatively less educated families and they had their previous education in ordinary public schools,
they achieved to be accepted to the top universities of Turkey. These facts support the argument
that top level managers are meritocrats. They are not coming from well-educated, wealthy
families and their cultural capital is not supported by their families’ cultural, and in many cases

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economic, capital. However, we can talk about a reinforcement of their cultural capital by their
spouses’ education. The spouses of all the managers also graduated from the top universities.
These managers are aware of the importance of cultural capital gained through education and they
provide their children education in well-known private schools; all the managers who have
children old enough to go to school send their children to famous private schools for education.