Brazilian ethanol market: Organizational change and impacts on the governance structures of distribution firms, 2000-2012

The purpose of this paper shows and analyzes recent changes undergone by the Brazilian ethanol industry, comparing two specific years (2000 and 2012) to evaluate the performance of governance structures adopted by fuel distributors in the resale of ethanol in Brazil in this period.

In this work, the analysis is restricted to the ethanol trade, using survey data from Soares (2012), who mapped the governance structures in the sector and its control mechanisms. Next, a temporal analysis of governance structures in 2000 and 2012 is conducted to identify recent changes in the transactions between distributors and stations.

The paper concludes that there has been a significant change in the ethanol negotiation models, highlighting the contractual hybrid governances of large distributors, such as which governance structure presented more robust results in terms of gaining market share and increasing average sales per unit of fuel resold in the period analyzed.

This paper is a review of innovative organizational dynamics distributor sector of ethanol in Brazil after deregulation in the late nineties and after the insertion of hybrid vehicles in the domestic market in 2003 (automobiles powered by gasoline and ethanol). The paper makes a comparison of the strategies of firms between the years 2000 and 2012 bring important explanations for the functioning of this market and righligths the advantages and limitations of the public regulatory model chosen by the Brazilian government.