LAS COMBINACIONES DE NEGOCIO EN EL COOPERATIVISMO AGROALIMENTARIO ESPAÑOL: EL CASO DE LAS FUSIONES. ANÁLISIS DE SUS FACTORES DE ÉXITO Y FRACASO

Abstract

[EN] The small size of the agri-food cooperative sector in the European Union, and in particular in Spain, is identified as one of its main weaknesses, which has motivated from different fields, the search of formulas and methods that contribute by increasing its dimension, with the objective to grow their competitiveness and ability to operate successfully in increasingly global markets. In this scenario, have emerged in recent years the phenomena of concentration and cooperation between companies of different nature, which have been consolidated in almost all sectors as the way to achieve market leadership through mergers, creating cooperative groups or integration into second tier cooperatives, being the mergers one of the ways of integration more relevant in recent times. Despite the awaken interest these processes in Spain, the fact is that currently there is no one research from an empirical perspective that analyze them. This thesis aims to fill this gap, pursuing three objectives: - Making a characterization of mergers between agri-food cooperatives that have taken place in Spain during the period 1995-2005, as well as cooperatives that have participated in these processes. - Determine if these processes have achieved the objectives that were proposed in the field of improving its financial position, reduce their average costs and ultimately increase profitability and its members. - Set the key factors of success and identify combinations of elements or factors that usually cause failure. The results show that in general, mergers between agri-food cooperatives in Spain, have not improved their financial indicators, largely because it has not made a real post-merger integration, but in many cases has occurred a simple aggregation of resources from different cooperatives (human, material, etc.), which has not been accompanied by a restructuring of them, according to a plan for optimizing resources in order to improve the effectiveness of the new company. That has caused that despite the increase in turnover, the return for members is reduced. Secondly, as to the drivers factors of success in mergers, it is found that factors such as size or the initial financial economic situation of the agri-food cooperatives, have influence on the likelihood of their success. The results show that entities with initial lower dimension and tighter profitability ratios are getting a more significant improvement in their post-merger results. The thesis is structured as follows: Chapter 1 includes the introduction, objectives, methodology and research design. Chapters 2-5 contain publications generated by this research (three articles published in recognized scientific journals and a monograph). Finally, Chapter 6 contains a discussion of results and main conclusions of the research.; [ES] La reducida dimension del sector cooperativo agroalimentario en la Union Europea, y en particular en Espana, se identifica como una de sus principales debilidades, lo que ha motivado que desde distintos ambitos se busquen formulas y vias que…