Contract and Organizational theories establish that complex organizations with diffuse ownership, such as agriculture cooperatives, should benefit from the separation of ownership and decision control. In developed economies, such as the USA and Canada, these organizations, aligned with the theoretical proposition, adopt governance models that promote the separation of ownership and decision rights. However, in Brazil, despite the lack ofquantitative studies that measure governance separation, anecdotal evidence suggests that ownership and decisions rights are concentrated in Brazilian cooperatives. By means of a survey with 77 Brazilian agricultural cooperatives, this paper measures the degree of de jure and de facto separation of ownership and decision control, providing new evidences on the governance models observed in different countries. Different models coexist in Brazil, i.e., although the majority of agricultural cooperatives concentrate ownership and decision rights, a significant proportion organize themselves consistently with the theoretical proposition, adopting the American models of agricultural cooperatives. Further research is required in order to address the determinants of the variety of governance models in Brazil.
agricultural cooperatives; control; corporate governance
