Heterogeneity of plural forms: a revised transaction cost approach

• Ano de defesa: 2016
• Autor(a) principal: Schnaider, Paula Sarita Bigio
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Agribusiness; Agronegócio; Asset specificity; Ativo específico; Custos de transação; Economia institucional; Formas plurais; Incerteza; Plural forms; Transaction cost; Uncertainty
• Link de acesso: http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/12/12139/tde-07032016-092021/

This dissertation addresses an important empirical regularity that is still not very well understood: the same firm, in a given institutional context, simultaneously relies on different organizational arrangements to govern similar (or identical) transactions. I will follow Bradach & Eccles (1989) and Menard (2013) and treat this phenomenon as \'plural forms\'. The dissertation is composed of four chapters, each of which, providing different but complementary approaches to plural forms and serving as input for the next: the first half of this dissertation remains theoretical, while the second presents distinct qualitative empirical contributions on the theme. In the first chapter, I intend to verify what has been theorized about plural forms and how this field has evolved over time. I am especially concerned with the multiple theoretical explanations about the reasons why firms adopt plural forms, mainly because, to date, there is no consensus on the subject. To this end, I both perform some bibliometric analyses by surveying the ISI Web of Science platform and qualitatively review some significant papers on the subject. I find that the combination of asset specificity and multiple types of uncertainty underlies most of the explanations used over time and highlight that these could be interesting variables for a model predicting plural forms. In the second chapter, I am concerned with explaining the variety of plural form manifestations. However, in order to understand such variety, I build a theoretical model integrating asset specificity and uncertainty to predict plural and non-plural forms. Next, I emphasize that these arrangements are heterogeneous and, to keep my argumentation tractable, I define three categories of plural forms: \'between\' (or the combination of different modalities of organizational arrangements), \'within\' (or the combination oh hybrid arrangements) and \'combo\' ( or the combination of \'between\' and \'within\'). My hypotheses relate each of these three types of plural forms to the different typologies of uncertainty (market, technological and performance assessment) that capture the essential dimensions of the concept. In the next two chapters, I empirically confornt my theretical model and hypotheses with qualitative empirical data concerning the Brazilian Agribusiness sector. In the third chapter, I seek to verify whether the combination of uncertainty and asset specificity predicts the emergence of plural forms. Moreover, I assess whether different levels of uncertainty and of asset specificity (combined) determine the selection of distinct organizational arrangements. To this end, I perform an embedded clinical case study at the Korin company, which produces and commercializes multiple organic products. I am concerned with the procurement of distinct inputs (regular and organic corn, regular soybeans, poultry and antibiotic-free eggs), both with plural and with non-plural forms. I find support for my model and for the idea that different levels of asset specificity and uncertainty push towards the adoption of distinct organizational arrangements. In the final chapter, I intend to empirically confront both my theoretical model (i.e., if asset specificity and uncertainty predict plural or non-plural forms) and my hypotheses (i.e., whether different types of high uncertainty, subject to a certain degree of asset specificity, push towards different types of plural forms). To this end, I survey the procurement of inputs by 24 companies operating in the Brazilian Agribusiness sector and procuring 11 different inputs by means of both plural and non-plural forms. I make use of a 4-point likert scale questionnaire capturing my theoretical variables and perform some qualitative analyses. I find empirical support for my theoretical model and for some of my hypotheses concerning the diversity of plural forms, indicating a path for further empirical analyses.