EXECUTIVE SUMMARIES

International Food and Agribusiness Management Review
Vol 5 Iss 4 2003

Executive Summaries

The Perception of Changes in Agricultural Cooperatives due to a Strategic
Alliance: The Case of Swine Raisers Cooperative from Encantado-RS
(Brazil) and Tetra Pak

PhD. Tania Nunes da Silva, Phd. Eugenio Avila Pedrozo, and MSc. Mario Stockmann

To cope with the environmental changes, the Brazilian agribusiness sectors went
through a process of deep transformation and many companies had to turn to mergers,
acquisitions, and successions. The alliances can change the characteristics of the
partners’ enterprises even for the agricultural cooperatives. The main objective of the
research was to analyze the strategic alliance with Tetra Pak LTDA and the main
process used by Cosuel in its restructuring during the period or 1997—2000.

This work is a case study. Multiple theoretic propositions (strategic alliances, change
cube, double cooperative complexity) guided the collection and analysis of the
information. It has an exploratory nature and is founded on information gathered
primarily from “in depth” interviews. The focus of analysis was the Strategic Unit of Dairy
Business of Cosuel. The participants in the research were: the dairy unit manager,
development manager and financial manager of Cosuel, the manager of Tetra Pak
LTDA in Rio Grande do Sul, five associates that knew the alliance formation, and fifteen
associates, milk producers, from the milk region chosen at random. The secondary
information was gathered by document analysis. Content analysis technique was used
in the treating of the information gathered in the interviews.

Under the perspective of the change’s cube two important change dimensions can be
seen:

Strategy: change in Cosuel’s relation with the market and the production of milk in terms
of: vision (focusing on better quality); positions (repositioning of the milk on the market);
programs (change in the handling of the animals, collecting and transporting of the raw
material, quality control of the milk produced, genetic material and new equipment,

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