Liderança nas redes de cooperação associativas de PMEs: um estudo de caso na rede Centersul de Mato Grosso

Abstract

Due to the changes that took place in society and in economy, big companies join forces to increasingly take over the market. In a similar way, small and mid-sized companies do partnerships, or still, act sympathetically in set as a way to guarantee the competitiveness and its own survival, producing new organizational formats, as a network. Thus, the cooperative networks are presented as a viable alternative for the survival and the growth of small and mid-sized firms (SMFs). However, although there are studies on cooperative networks, little attention was given to the leadership in those organizations. Therefore, this dissertation deals with the subject leadership in the associative cooperative networks of SMFs. The main objective is to understand how the leadership is made up in the associative cooperative networks of SMFs. To do so, the study is based on the quantitative, qualitative, and exploratory research and the method used was the case study. The research had as empirical field of inquiry a cooperative network related to the retail segment, in the area of construction material, called Rede Centersul, located in Mato Grosso. This way, information from three sources was collected: documents, questionnaires and semi structuralized interviews. The first one, combined with the interviews, made the visualization of the organizational structure of the network possible, showing its formal leadership. The questionnaires led to the Social Network Analysis (SNA) that, combined with the interviews, disclosed the relative structure of the network and how the informal leadership is set in it. Thus, according to the analysis of these data, it was possible to visualize the organizational structure and the relative structure of the network. The findings showed that the leadership in the network is constituted from the formal and informal structures and that its performance is important for the development and maintenance of the cooperative network, since it collaborates for the increase of the confidence and the growth of social capital.