This study aimed to understand the relations existing between the dynamics of an Organizational Field's structuring and the strategies adopted by their actors. For both, the authors conducted a longitudinal research in the field of Shrimp Farm - agribusiness of shrimp - in Rio Grande do Norte State (RN). To operationalise the research, we performed the collection of information multiple and plural, with the adoption of various instruments for research, with emphasis on direct observation, for the semi-structured interviews, proceeded with different actors of the field (enterprises, cooperatives, trade and industry associations, universities, and government), and, still, to a broad collection of secondary data. From the data analysis, carried out in accordance with the directions of Bardin (2004), it has been observed that, as it is presupposed, field and strategies have been related in a way recursive, which reaffirms the inactivity of causal relationships only to consider the influence of one of these elements on the other. Regarding more specifically the Field's structuring, it was noticed that, at any moment of the thirty five years covered by the survey - since the genesis of the field, in 1973, until 2008 - the Shrimp Farming in RN obtained the highest level of institutionalization. Yet, in spite of this, that, currently, in the light of political factors, cultural, economic, and, above all, of the trajectory of the particular field itself - of which the strategies shown to be fundamental part -, the Shrimp Farming in RN shows a low level of institutionalization. This fact has an intimate relationship with the strategies identified, put it, having been built, historically, on the tripod: distrust-opportunism-rivalry, the field became a stage conducive to the adoption of strategies late and devoid of a compromising collective; quite fragile in order to leverage the continuous development of the Shrimp Farm activity. A fact which, added to so many other evidences, it signals that the Shrimp Farming in RN consists of one more case in which the action is not as efficient as it promises to be and that reinforces the value of approaches suited to grasp the social relations in which organizations are embedded.
Institutional theory; Organizational field; Sociological approaches; Organizational strategies; Shrimp farm
