Modernidade, modernização e identidade nas tradicionais organizações produtoras de café do Sul de Minas Gerais

Abstract

This study analyzes the significance ofthe changes in the course ofcoffee activity by the traditional producing organizations from the South Minas region. From the outcome, this study tries to understand how these organizations participate in the construction oftheir new identities and their environment. Beginning from two complementary theoretical referentials: the organizations approach as social constructions and the complexity ofthe paradigm to understand the change and organizational identity, in the context ofmodernity. Multicase studies ofthree traditional coffee producing organizations in the South of Minas were done. Tradition and modernity are combined by these organizations in atime ofexpressive changes at local and global levei. The coffee culture crisis in the last ten years (1986-1996), the high production costs and the competition with emergent mechanizable áreas, with lower costs and better productivities, question the viability ofthe mountain coffee culture in the South Minas region, the main producing region in the country. Onthe otherhand, the end ofthe regulamentation ofthe activity by the government, the end ofthe International Coffee Agreements and the new production and consumption paradigms represent a new context ofpolitical, economical and social interaction. This study tries to show how the organizations representing the productive sectorofthe coffee chain are inserted in a chain ofmutual causality from which, the changes develop according to circular interaction standards. The active participation ofthese organizations in the creation of new institutional arrangements and in the construction oftheir environments is shown from their inter-dependency and relationships with other societal elements such as associations, unions and political entities representative of the sector. It was observed during the research process that each organization developed itself following their own contingencies. The differences in the trajectory ofthe three organizations researched show how the interpretation ofthe environment is a productofthe organizational identity itself andhow the constituent dimensions ofthe identity operate positively in the construction ofthese trajectories. The most expressive changes were in those organizations that got involved in extensive chains of mutual causality combining transformations ofinternai and externai context, making new elements integral parts ofthe organization oftheir environments. In this process new values are aggregated, old values and cultural presuppositions are maintained or reconsidered. New propositions related to the production systems emerge as possibilities in modern times. In relation to the changes in management ofthe work force, the logic oftransformation ofthese relations according to urban institutional standards predominates