A confiança nas relações interorganizacionais cooperativas: estudo múltiplo de casos em empresas de Biotecnologia no Brasil

• Ano de defesa: 2004
• Autor(a) principal: Cleverson Renan da Cunha
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; UFMG
• Palavras-chave em Português: Administração; Cultura organizacional; Relações interorganizacionais Brasil
• Link de acesso: http://hdl.handle.net/1843/BUBD-99XFN8

The hardening of competitiveness and the challenges to the contemporaneous organizations have motivated the development of inter-organizational relations. In such context, trust has been highlighted as a vital instrument for the accomplishment of more flexible and efficientpartnerships rather than coercive control instruments mainly in organizational fields which deal with innovation and search for limits, like biotechnology. Therefore, there was an analysis over the existing dynamics of trust in the development process of inter-organizationalrelationship that aims at researching and developing new products and/or services in human health biotechnology companies installed in Brazil. Such analysis was made in three distinct levels. On the first level, the objective was to identify the trust bases present in the Braziliansociety, in a multidisciplinary perspective. This involved knowledge in anthropology, political sciences, sociology, laws and history, obtained through bibliographical analyses and nonstructured interviews. On the second level, the context in which biotechnology is inserted, aswell as the production of research and technology in the country, had special attention when a discussion was held about the characteristics of the organizations that make use of biotechnology in their operations and the factors related to public policies that favor (or not) the development of such area. About this second level, its worthwhile saying that certainmethodological procedures were adopted based on the bibliographical and documental analysis, as well as on the non-structured interviews. On the third level, case studies were carried out in three Brazilian organizations that hold cooperated technological development inbiotechnology. One is Katal Diagnósticos, which produces kits for human health diagnoses and has recently begun forming partnerships with other organizations; another company is the result of the rupture process of Biobrás, which inherited this last companys labs, the researchteam, and the management of the patent for the recombinant insulin; the Instituto Bio-Manguinhos was the third company to be analyzed. This third company is the operational wing of the Fundação Oswaldo Cruz responsible for the development and production of vaccines, reactants, and diagnostic kits. Here, structured interviews, non-structured interviewsand documental analyses were adopted as source of information. The information obtained was analyzed by the content analysis method. The principal theoretical context used in the trust study was based on Luhmanns (1979, 1998) and Giddenss (1991) works. They aim atunderstanding trust by analyzing the social structures. The inter-organizational relationships were studied taking as a reference Ring and Van de Vens (1994) work, which understands that such relationships must be considered as a cyclical process of negotiation, establishment of commitments, execution of the agreed actions and decisions made, constantly revised. With the first level of analysis, it was possible to identify that the traditional standards that upholdrelationships and trust in our society is under transition and still do not offer conditions to motivate the use of trust in relations between companies that are out of their natural context. Conditions like friendship, family ties, and other primary relations are no longer enough tolead to the establishment and development of relationships in this organizational area. However, the civil society, the State and its institutions, still do not offer all the necessary conditions for the adoption of new trust bases, like the legal system or the social contract,which forces organizations to make use of contracts and other control mechanisms, mostly as mimesis than as a result of a rational action. With the study over the biotechnological area, the weak institutionalization of the area and the incipient technological development carried outby human health companies located in Brazil have shown evident. This has greatly contributed to the shortage in cooperation between organizations. By analyzing the cases, one will easily identify that trust has been regarded as vitally important for the establishment ofpartnerships, which makes it evident that there are two domains: that of the interorganizational relationships and that of the interpersonal relationships, being this latter preponderant. Differently from what has been found in the related literature, the concept of trust for the companies researched is even simpler, which may be summarized as someonesexpectation that the other person will fulfill the pre-established agreements. If trust is simplified when it comes to its definition, the same cannot be said of its influence over the establishment and development of agreements of mutual cooperation. After all, each relationship differs from the others, since it is not built hand in hand by the partners, andinvolves various circumstantial factors, such as the participants interests, the importance of the alliance for the companys strategic objectives, the impact the cooperation will produce to each side, besides the personal contacts occurred in each organization.