Determinantes das formas de governança e complementaridades contratuais nas negociações dos produtores de coco do Estado de Alagoas ; Determinants of governance forms and contractual complementarities in the coconut producers negotiations in Alagoas State

Brazil is the world's fifth largest producer of coconut. Most of the country’s production is concentrated in the Northeast region. However, since the 1980s, coconut farming has expanded to include almost the entire country, a change motivated by the increase in world consumption of coconut derivatives. In this restructuring process, some traditional states have lost participation nationally. This is the case of Alagoas, which was already the third largest producer in Brazil, prior to the restructuring period. However, in the past few decades, it has persisted in this activity more for social than solely economic aspects – as is tradition of this culture, implanted during the colonial period. In Alagoas, production is practiced, to a greater extent, by family farmers with an area of less than 10 acres. These production systems allow individual farms to unit with other more profitable crop lands. As a result, the low volume of coconut production associated with the coconut tree's seasonality means that most producers' commercialization is restricted to transactions with intermediaries and open markets rather than with cooperatives. Other producers, with greater production volume, trade directly with the few industries installed in that state, in addition to the large intermediaries. In this sense, Alagoas’ restricted marketing channel demonstrates several aspects of organizational evolution through the use of different coordination mechanisms. Thus, the objective of this thesis is to show and analyze the determinants of the adoption of hybrid organizational arrangements and the contractual complementarities in coconut transactions in Alagoas. Studying such transactions is relevant due to the characteristics of their buyers, formed by a few agents, but with different organizational structures. As a result, the bargaining power of coconut producers, in terms of commercial negotiation, varies according to the type of configuration that the transaction assumes. The theoretical framework is based on the Transaction ...