Technology vs. Institutions

El estudio del Derecho de Sociedades puede entenderse como estudio de las organizaciones. Dentro de éstas, dos son los grandes problemas que se examinan. Por un lado, cómo financian sus actividades las organizaciones (aportaciones de los socios – capital –; deuda, ganancias retenidas…). Por otro, y en la medida en que las organizaciones las forman grupos de personas, cómo se gobierna la organización (órganos de gobierno, su composición, elección y control, mecanismos de toma de decisiones, entrada y salida de miembros en el grupo…). Hay un tercer aspecto – supongo que hay más –: el de las relaciones entre los avances tecnológicos y la estructura financiera o de gobierno de las organizaciones. Es decir, de qué modo, una innovación tecnológica provoca cambios en la organización – en las organizaciones – de la actividad.

Este trabajo analiza un caso histórico: la invención de la centrifugadora para separar la nata de la leche en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX y cómo ésta cambió la organización de los ganaderos daneses que dejaron de desarrollar su actividad como empresarios individuales para formar cooperativas.

it is first important to note the fact that in some ways the institutional development of the cooperatives was inseparable from the technological development of the separator (centrifugador de la leche que permitía separar la nata de la leche y, por tanto, acelerar la producción de mantequilla). In fact, the centrifuge at first presented a challenge to Danish agriculture, which the new organizational form helped to solve. The first steam-driven cream separators were made for the daily milk of 300 to 400 cows, thus exceeding by far the average Danish herd size of 6 to 14 cows. Only a small fraction of Danish farmers, mostly traditional estates, could aspire to run these cream separators on their own. However, even many of these estates had herd sizes far below 300.The new technology thus presented difficulties for the organization of the second step of production, since increasing the average herd size to optimum sizes for all farms would have required reallocation of land and farms to a degree exceeding that possible By bringing together large numbers of small producers, the cooperative movement was able to take advantage of the many benefits the centrifuge offered, perhaps most importantly that cream could be instantly separated from the milk without requiring time for separation. This was even the case for milk which had been transported over long distances, which would have been completely homogenized by the process of transportation, and thus would have required much longer time for separation under the old system, with higher risks of the milk spoiling.

… Also, Hviid (2006) describes how the ability to produce large quantities of a homogeneous product helped small producers to realize a better price for their product.

La cooperativa no era la única forma organizativa disponible. Pero las “private creamery” no tuvieron éxito

They bought milk from surrounding farms and thus differed from cooperative creameries which were collectively owned by their suppliers. Importantly for us, however, both used essentially the same technology (Henriksen 1999, p. 63), but Henriksen (1997) and Henriksen and Hviid (2005) have argued that cooperative creameries were the superior institutional form for several reasons. First, they were attractive to farmers because they offered them a larger slice of the cake, since farmers as owners not only received payments for their milk as suppliers, but also dividends as residual claimants. This should have reduced deadweight losses and adverse redistribution effects due to the market power of the owner of the cream-separator.

Si es así, coincidiría con la sugerencia de Hansmann según la cual, las cooperativas surgen cuando una parte del mercado se enfrenta a un monopolista en la otra parte. Por ejemplo, los habitantes de una ciudad que quieren dotarse de un servicio de electricidad o de agua corriente acabarán siendo clientes de un monopolista por lo que, para evitar ser explotados, pueden preferir “comprar” al monopolista, esto es, gestionar el servicio como una cooperativa

Second, they seem to have been the best option to avoid the problem posed by the large initial investment involved in acquiring the cream separator and the associated capital (particularly the creamery building and steam power generators) which involved the risk of ex-post extortion by milk suppliers (‘lock-in’ and ‘hold up’).

Obsérvese cómo, para reducir el riesgo de que cada ganadero engañara al resto entregando a la cooperativa la leche de peor calidad, se firmaban “output contracts”, esto es, los ganaderos se obligaban a vender toda su producción a la cooperativa. Además, así

They achieved this by forcing their members to sign collective agreements for the regular provision of all their milk (except that for own consumption in the household) to their creamery for a fixed minimum, thus ensuring that the initial investment could be recovered. Third, the cooperative institutional form was also helpful for dealing with asymmetric information on the quality (cream content) of the milk provided and could furthermore ensure year-round supply of milk by forcing their members to provide winter-feeding of milk cows

La cooperativa estableció un sistema de control de calidad de la leche entregada. Y, en este control, tenía ventajas sobre las lecherías particulares.

Private dairies seem therefore to have faced a problem of less regular milk supply and potentially lower quality of the supplied milk due to hold-up problems

No es extraño tampoco que los grandes ganaderos, que disponían de producción suficiente como para justificar la adquisición de una separadora, constituyesen la tercera forma empresarial aunque estos últimos

might face principal-agent problems in milking and additionally might be running cream-separators below their best capacity utilization because not all of them actually had sufficiently large herd sizes