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The purpose of this paper is to discuss and problematise how leadership and employees, or “employeeship”, are constructed within IKEA, a global firm often associated with national identity, and connected to distinct values and a leadership ideal. From a critical management perspective, the authors' intent was to study whether there were hierarchies and polarisations in constructions of leadership and, if so, how they were manifested.

The empirical material consists of 17 interviews with Swedish and non-Swedish managers at the senior management level and internal documents.

The analysis of the empirical material supports the finding that employees are constructed in superior vs subordinate positions based on beliefs about nationality (ethnicity), wherein the construction of Swedishness is ranked above other nationalities. Based on these constructions, two different dimensions of a leader emerge. The first dimension is one of leading and supporting, which involves personal development and is regarded as something positive. The second dimension involves being a manager, which is perceived as conservative, dreary and unappealing.

The study illustrates how leaders in a global firm construct hierarchies and polarisation in the daily work.

The purpose of this paper is to try to explain how long‐term mismanagement of a housing estate could arise in a country with a strong legal framework aimed at preventing such situations.

Assuming that both tenants and landlords are rational, the paper presents a set of hypotheses that is consistent with the information available.

It is argued that the tenants stayed even though the rent was higher and the quality was lower than in neighboring areas because of a combination of three factors: rents were paid by different forms of welfare payments; lack of alternatives because of queues to other areas; and because some tenants saw an advantage in the “no‐question” asked policy that the slumlord followed. It is further argued that the property owner found this slum‐strategy profitable either because he hoped to find a “bigger fool” to sell to and/or because the decision makers in the company had not invested their own money. Both tenants and investors were, in the end, losers, but not the company managers.

The Swedish legal framework is, to a large extent, based on the idea that tenants should take action when there are problems. For several reasons the tenants in the area did not do that and it indicates that a more active role for the local authorities is necessary.

The paper focuses on an interesting case that most people thought could not occur and tries to explain this within a framework of rational actors.