Cooperation, early internationalization and business organization in Latin America: the case of the Organización Techint

Abstract

Through the study of the historical beginnings of Organización Techint (OT), this paper tries to discuss the idea of innovation present in the frameworks for understanding the nature of the world's emergent economic groups. Focusing on the career of Agostino Rocca, the founder of the OT, during the interwar years and on the firm's evolution during the Postwar Years, this article attempts to unravel the process of social network formation that allowed the firm to access capital, technology and manpower, as well as a position in the public works market of energy, both locally and internationally. With the help of economic sociology and other theoretical lines that develop the phenomenon of cooperation between firms and heterogeneous agents, it sustains the importance of the horizontal relations between both companies that formed the group as well as between those which did not, as a key to understanding the success of the group and its early internationalization.