Growth Strategies in the Sugarcane Sector: A Relationship between Macro-Environmental Variables and Movements of Strategic Growth

Abstract

The sugarcane sector has been gaining more importance in both Brazilian and World economies, even though it has had a lack of agricultural investments and climate issues has generated questionings about the future of the sector. To analyse this trend, the present work was based on the following growth strategies: internal growth, horizontal integration, diversification, and vertical integration. The objective of the present research is to assess the relationship between these types of strategies and macro-environmental variables in order to determine any possible correlation. Bibliographic and documental survey on the behaviour of macro-environment variables was carried out. The Pearson’s correlation test was used to identify the relationship between these variables and growth strategies. It was possible to observe that each type of growth strategy is related to one specific type of variable, which is exclusive to each strategy, except in the case of diversification. That is, electric energy prices have a correlation with internal growth and the real growth rate is correlated with horizontal growth. None of these macro-environmental variables repeated in other growth strategies. The only exception was the diversification strategy, which was correlated with eight variables, with five of these being exclusive to this type of strategy.