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The sociological approach of New Institutionalism premises that organizational responses to institutional demands depend on how the actors' networksare structured. This article proposes measures to assess the structural properties of the organizational fields of beef in Brazil and Argentina in two large producing regions, intending to evaluate their capacity to respond to the growing institutional demands of the agri-food sector. Four structural properties of networks were identified: openness, centralization, the density of central actors and their links with peripheral actors, and intermediation attributes. From these, a descriptive quantitative study was carried out based on primary and secondary data and analysis supported by the UCINET 6 software. It was mainly observed that both organizational fields are open to innovation, but the central actors are uncoordinated with few links touniversities and research centerswhile possessingdifferent characteristics to absorb and transfer demands and associate central and peripheral actors. This paper's contribution is on the application of a different theoretical approach that usually isnot associated with the agribusiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]