The reconstruction of leader’s career after the change of the corporate control: A case study in São Paulo electricity sector

Abstract

This research investigates how a company changes after the privatization process and how this change impacts its total structure. For Donadone and Sznelwar (2004), the pressures of new business owners, in this case coming out of the hands of the state to the hands of private companies, have a consequence of organizational design and the composition of power in companies. Therefore, this research focused on an exploratory study at AES Eletropaulo. This study has a central role in the Brazilian electricity sector because due to the radical changes it has been subjected since 90’s financialization. However, no research on careers construction of leaders in the Brazilian context had been made so far. As a research procedure this study combined quantitative and qualitative methods in order to analyze the careers of leaders of AES Eletropaulo, we collected the curriculum of the Board and Directors, since its emergence as a state enterprise in 1979 to the year of 2012. These curriculums were analysed with a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA). In addition, this research was complemented with an interview with the former president of the company where the study was performed. As a result, we were able to observe the several changes that AES Eletropaulo went through, especially that, the leaders of this company had to find ways to rebuild their careers according to the new logic of the moment, which would have been facing financially. The capacity for reconversion is very large in these companies that the engineers end up reconverting their careers, these workers update themselves through courses and degrees, acquire new skills in the human, administrative and social areas, to become more flexible in a first moment of organizational change and reconvert themselves into engineers who work in financial areas, so they can stay in their elite positions. All this is marked and explained by the preference of hiring of engineers in the large Brazilian companies for high ranking positions.