The Brazilian Institutional Environment: The Impact on Companies' Strategies in the Oil and Gas Sector

Abstract

Institutional theory explains how interactions between organizations and institutions shape economic activity and consequently managerial performance and strategies. The institutional setting of most emerging countries is in transition, whereby a relationship-based transaction mode is gradually yielding to rule-based transactions. This study investigates how the institutional environment in Brazil influences the strategy of oil and gas companies, based upon a case study approach to exploration and production in the oil and gas sector. The results obtained from secondary data and interviews with executives of the main Brazilian oil and gas companies and members of public organizations demonstrate that institutions have a limited influence on the decisions of these companies, since the regulatory dimension plays the biggest role in decision making.

Keywords: business/government interaction and relations, business and society, institutional theory, resource-based view, resource dependency, stakeholder theory