Mexican MBA Students’ Perceptions and Preferences of Economic Inequality.

Previous research has shown that elites tend to justify economic inequality. For most of them, the current concentration of income and wealth is fair since the rich are the ones who work the most and contribute more value to society. Does this finding hold for MBA (Master of Business Administration) students who aspire to become members of the Mexican economic elite? Based on semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this paper, underpinned by Michell Lamont’s boundary approach, shares the results of a research project about MBA students’ perceptions and preferences regarding economic inequality. Perceptions intend to describe the world “as it is”. On this ground, I will focus on students’ framing of the main causes and consequences of economic inequality. Moreover, preferences are what is desired. Here, I will delve into students’ preferable means to diminish economic inequality. As the paper will show, students understand inequality as a problem caused and experienced mainly by disadvantaged people. Thus, they say almost nothing about the resource accumulation of the already well-off. Furthermore, they reject distributional strategies like tax increases to the rich or limits to the accumulation of wealth, arguing that such measures could have harmful outcomes. Here, they imagine catastrophic scenarios where Mexican society and economy go down-hill. Conversely, they prefer what could be seen as a cultural transformation through educational initiatives that, allegedly, must make the rich sensible toward social problems and gear the poor with financial, political and moral knowledge. With this paper, I seek to contribute to the recent stream of research concerning elites’ sense-making activity of inequality. This is particularly important because, as aspiring elites, MBA students will one day hold leadership positions within the private sector, whether it be as top executives or as business owners.