Resumo

Cooperative organizations are well researched but the institutional impacts of inner opposing institutional logics on their production strategies still needs more research. Cooperatives are market entities also bound to traditional principles that may induce less organizational and productive flexibility and poorer financial performance. The cooperative literature forks in two directions – either cooperatives should stick to their traditional, community-based values and logics, or should otherwise try to mimic investor-owned firms general behaviors to become competitive.

The impacts of such orientations (choosing between market-drive versus community0-driven as well as possible hybridization of strategies) (Ménard, 2004), on the other hand, is much less studied (Soboh, Lansink & Van Dijk, 2012). In this paper, we discuss the implications of such opposing duality of institutional logics on the productive and financial performance in Brazilian agribusiness cooperatives.

Cooperatives suffer market pressures and state regulations and agricultural cooperatives more so, by having to satisfy both internal, community-driven goals as well as external, market-driven performance targets. In addition, they deal with organizational models that most commonly decouple control, decision-making and property rights. Cooperatives compete against IOFs in the marketbut their social function interpreted from its final objectivesis a priority, even though their ideological aspects are somewhat residual.

To compare the three variables (financial performance, are and number of associates), we employed a local regression method-based surface simulation, taking into account all points in a three-dimensional plane. Data were collected from 57 cooperatives. We created a performance variable (PERF), based on a simplification of the competitiveness model of Lucato et al. (2012) and can be described as a vector that measures the degree of adequacy of the cooperative in relation to a benchmark coming from the sample itself

The data gathered allow to understand a few tendencies. First, per H1, there is a sharp tendency of ‘large area and membership’ strategies to work out adequately in terms of financial performance. While H2 parameters do not yield as much financial result, it still provides a local maximum that offers insights about alternative strategies to attain financial stability. H3 points to the middle area of the plot. It is possible to see that there is a valley (linearly from maximum to maximum), pointing to a lower financial performance, and we deem H3 supported.

This study aimed at discussing the repercussions of opposing institutional logics nested inside the same organizational strategic approaches. As such, the data gathered allows to understand that mixed approaches (i.e., attempting to combine both) yield mixed to critical results. On the other hand, focusing on either one or the other approach, and especially when giving internal and external constituencies and observers some value to the opposing side, in a ceremonial conformity, yields better results.

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