Justification/ motivation:

In the 1970s with the emergence and strengthening of institutional investors is set to a new debate about the management and ownership. In this context, a new agent comes in companies: institutional investors. (Useem 1999). This enables investors making the process of mergers and acquisitions in North American firms and in the mid-1990s the privatization process in Brazil. At this time of restructuring within companies, reengineering and downsizing will be tools that will update the organizational dynamics. Within this new business model, the focus is always to contemplate the interests of shareholders.

It is within this process of loss of power of the managers and the gain of the financial investidors that we will reflect on the role of social actors in the organizational field. Within this process of "culture war" (Donadone, 2004) and which is designed a new type of control within organizations that we think about the action of the production engineer.

With the cuts of functions and the process of outsourcing a large contingent of managers is moved from their old jobs. Therefore, they seek to convert some strategies to be re-allocated in the labor market. (Chandler, 1999) That is, within this process of organizational change that we can visualize an intense change in career and employability of many actors linked to the context of companies, such as the production engineers.

Research problem:

In order to respond to the changes currently taking place in work organization within companies, changes in professional role of agents allocated in the business field, and so we can understand the processes and dynamics that occur between social workers and this new logic organization is that we open space for the study of life trajectories of production engineers in the State of São Paulo. The starting point we will use to try to analyze and understand the relationships that occur in the life course of productions engineers (former managers) will be to define the limits of field experience and professional activities of respondents.

Methods:

The research will include a random sampling of production engineers in the following institutions: Polytechnic School of USP (Universidade de São Paulo), students UFSCar (Federal University of Sao Carlos) and the Universidade Paulista (UNIP).

We will do interviews (posopographic analysis) and use a database to process statistical data obtained from interviews and make the proper statistical crossings.

Data analysis will be made ​​from the reading and analysis of systematic data in the form of tables, charts, and other statistical tools.

Discussion:

We will check what are the career choices of our social actors and how these choices with respect to social capital, cultural and economic factors of individuals. Soon, we will analyze whether the capital is homogeneous between the actors or whether there was heterogeneity with respect to the incoming (emerging) and the elite players (established). Another important issue to consider is the positioning of the actors and how their choices are given chronologically. Analyze whether these choices have changed over time.

Or rather, we find that the implication of the conceptual model of the business year 1980 for example, and the current business model, financialized. In this sense we propose some questions: a company financialized require its agents the same social capital than a traditional company? The company financialized shall dictate the change in the composition of capital between individuals?

Expected results:

Our results will be analyzed and questioned in line with some assumptions of economic sociology in Brazil. This is guided in French studies and is articulated the notion of social construction in which even the size facing the financial professions currently are not necessarily organized and arranged according to a purely formal rationality and economic character.