Gestão Cooperativa, Ambiente Institucional e Sociocultural: o caso Brasil-Paraguai

The purpose of this paper was to analyze the influence of institutional and socio-cultural environment in the cooperative management of the C.Vale – Agroindustrial Cooperative, compared to the most representative units located in Parana, Brazil, and the ones located in Paraguay. The analyses of the institutional environment were based on the New Institutional Economics, with emphasis on the Douglass North’s theory (1990) analisaabout the institutions and occurred with in loco interviews in each cooperative unit that was covered by the sample. The analysis of the cultural environment was based on the characterization of the organizational culture of each cooperative unit, according to the Competing Value Model, developed by Cameron and Quinn (1998), that typifies it in group culture, innovative, market and hierarchical, applied to the same managers, through online electronic questionnaire . The analysis of the social environment was based on the theoretical concept of social capital and the respective characteristics identified in the units by adapting the model proposed by the World Bank study group (BM), prepared by Grootaert et al. (2003), through the content analysis of the interviews. As a result to the established problem it was concluded that, even C.Vale being a single cooperative, there are influences of the institutional and the socio-cultural environment in the process of management of the cooperative units in Paraná and Paraguay. Finally, according to the grouping proposal of the cooperative units based on the collected data, four specific clusters were identified.