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This paper investigates the impacts of globalization processes on the Swiss business elite community during the 1980–2010 period. Switzerland has been characterized in the 20th century by its extraordinary stability and by the strong cohesion of its elite community. To study recent changes, we focus on Switzerland’s 110 largest firms’ by adopting a diachronic perspective based on three elite cohorts (1980, 2000, and 2010). An analysis of interlocking directorates allows us to describe the decline of the Swiss corporate network. The second analysis focuses on top managers’ profiles in terms of education, nationality as well as participation in national community networks that used to reinforce the cultural cohesion of the Swiss elite community, especially the militia army. Our results highlight a slow but profound transformation of top management profiles, characterized by a decline of traditional national elements of legitimacy and the emergence of new “global” elements. The diachronic and combined analysis brings into light the strong cultural changes experienced by the national business elite community.

Psychologists have created highly specific and elaborate models of the creative process and the variables affecting creative performance. Unfortunately, much of this research has tended to take either an overanalytical or an underanalytical approach. By overanalytical we mean that researchers have studied single, isolated stages of group creativity, such as idea generation. By underanalytical we mean that researchers have tended to treat “creative group performance” as a single, unitary construct. However, we argue that it would be better to approach creativity as a multidimensional sequence of behaviors. In support of this argument, we discuss research on individual as well as group creativity showing that, firstly, there are multiple routes toward creative performance (e.g., flexibility and persistence), which may be pursued alone or in combination. It is likely that these different routes are subject to distinct influences. Secondly, we argue and show that different stages of the creative process (problem finding, idea generation, idea selection, idea implementation) are not necessarily affected by the same variables, or in the same way. We highlight some new questions for research, and discuss implications for the management of groups and teams.