A Multiple-criteria Analysis Application for Vertical Coordination in the Transportation of Agricultural Commodities in Brazil

The strategies to perform the transportation of agricultural commodities by truck in Brazil are a challenge to decision making. This paper brings together widely held theories that are vertical coordination and decision analysis, to present a discussion of decision making in organizations. From a model capable to process main objectives, multiple criteria and variables found in transport verticalization problems, the results showed worse performance than hybrid or outsourced alternatives. This result supports that in environments with high dependence on low costs and asset specificity are no more likely to meet hybrid structures or market coordinated. However, the descriptive survey of road transport with agricultural shippers and the results of the multicriterial model indicated a highly outsourced transport market, which would be fostered by the current uncertainty and low professionalism of haulers. As the price difference between the outsourced model and vertical decreases there is a preference for hierarchical structure given his best performances in the benefits offered. Given the changes in the institutional environment, such as the transport regulation, competitive arrangements may change. This type of preference by decision makers would compose the vertical structures with more scale strategies by shippers.