The IT managers' voluntary risk taking and the new capitalism's justificatory system

This presentation aims to analyze the perception of voluntary risk taking of IT managers faced to a new capitalism’s justificatory system. Boltanski and Chiapello (1999) call this new justificatory system cité par projets, where actors are impelled to engage to an ensemble of values such as employability, versatility, mobility, flexibility and instability, which entails to the individuals responsibility to manage their own professional lives through the search for new challenges. Researches driven in Porto Alegre, a south brazilian city, show that IT managers find a positive way of dealing with the social requirement of risk taking putted by the managerial discourse by which the cité par projets’ values are transmitted. They experience a self-centered professional identity that allows them to perceive the risk taking as a form of liberty. However, be willing to take risks becomes imperative since it means the possibility of exploring networks, a way to avoid the threat of network’s exclusion – death’s synonym in a reticular universe as the cité par projets. Thus, although the IT managers can manage the risk taking as positive and voluntary due to their self-centered identity, the risk develops into a recognition principle, because the risk taking is a precondition to professional success. In this way, it’s very important to question the limits between a perception of voluntary risk tanking as an expression of freedom and the social imperative that rises from the cité par projets.