Julian Klinkhammer examines the paradigmatic case of Switzerland to what extent central theses on the globalization of management apply to the industrial elite. Through life courses and qualitative interviews, the study shows that in generational comparison, neither an unreservedly global elite nor a completely neoliberal corporate governance has made its way into top management. Instead, from a management sociological perspective, Switzerland is embedded in a process of global industrialization. The restructuring of global value chains is accompanied here by liberal bureaucratization at the organizational level. This trend towards a one-sided increase in formal rationality has spread even without state assistance, as it is rooted in the dominant interpretive patterns of top managers. This explains some of the ambivalences and paradoxes in selective opening.