Interview Summary
Luis Alejandro Pagani discusses the evolution of Grupo Arcor, founded in Cordoba, Argentina in 1951, from a small local firm into one of the leading chocolate manufacturers in Latin America. Pagani, who has served as president of Arcor since 1993, discusses how he framed the positioning of his brand, delivered growth by building strategic alliances, and circumvented the repeated economic and political crises in recent decades in Argentina by detecting new opportunities at pivotal moments. He raises three inflation-related crises in 1982, 1989, and 2001-2002, and describes how Arcor was able to sustain growth throughout. The interview discusses in detail the company's social and environmental policies—crucial to a company that supplies its own raw materials—and reveals how the Pagani family's participation in the group has changed over time.
And so we learned that globalization requires a proactive attitude. And you must be among the leaders in certain world markets. This is what we aim for.
Additional Resources
Arcor: Global Strategy and Local Turbulence [HBS Case]
Arcor: The Challenge of Becoming a Global Competitor [Stanford Graduate School of Business]
ARCOR Group’s Internationalization and the ARCOR Foundation in Brazil [Social Enterprise Knowledge Network]
María Inés Barbero, “Business Groups in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Argentina,” in Geoffrey Jones and Andrea Lluch, eds., The Impact of Globalization on Argentina and Chile: Business Enterprise and Entrepreneurship. Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar, 2015
María Esther Morales Fajardo and Cristian R.A. Plata Soto, “Learning and Management Skills: The Internationalization of Grupo Arcor. Analysis from a Process-Based Approach,” Revista de Dirección y Administración de Empresas no. 21 (2014): 21-44
Pankaj Ghemawat and Jordan I. Siegel, Cases about Redefining Global Strategy. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business Publishing, 2011
Verónica Baudino, “Las determinaciones agrícolas de la competitividad industrial: El caso de Arcor,” Mundo agrario, 2009
Martín Schorr and Andrés Wainer, “Trayectorias empresarias diferenciales durante la desindustrialización en la Argentina: Los casos de Arcor y Servotron,” Realidad Economica, 2006, 116-141
Mario Cerutti, editor, Empresas y grupos empresariales en América Latina, España y Portugal. Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, 2006
Lucio Traverso and Juan Quiroga, “Luis Pagani, Chairman of Grupo Arcor, on the Globalization of Argentine Firms,”
Academy of Management Executive 17, no. 3 (2003): 56-59
Bernardo Kosacoff, Jorge Forteza, María Inés Barbero, Fernando Porta, E. Alejandro Stergel, Going Global from Latin America: The ARCOR Case. Buenos Aires: McGraw-Hill Interamericana, 2002
Nadia Suarez Prada, “Alianzas estratégicas e internacionalización empresarial: Análisis comparativo de dos empresas: Freixenet y Arcor,”
Escritos Contables no. 43 (2002): 113-120
Interview Citation Format
"Interview with Luis Alejandro Pagani, interviewed by Andrea Lluch, November 18, 2008, Creating Emerging Markets Project, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, http://www.hbs.edu/creating-emerging-markets/."
