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Many companies use competition for either monetary or non-monetary rewards to induce employee effort. Pitting employees against each other in a competition could come at a thus far insufficiently considered cost of leading to lower employee cooperation. The authors examine how competition for monetary rewards in the form of tournament incentives or non-monetary rewards in the form of standing in uncompensated public rankings affects employee cooperation with former competitors in a subsequent task where the extent of the cooperation does not affect the welfare or social standing of the person deciding to cooperate. The authors hypothesize that competition in the first task negatively affects cooperation in the second task. The authors further predict that competition leads to psychological pressure, which mediates differences in cooperation. The results support the authors’ hypotheses. In addition, the authors find that the decrease in cooperation results from the behavior of low performers, whereas cooperation by high performers is not affected. The findings are important because they show that inducing effort in one dimension leads to an unintended cost in the form of lower cooperation in another dimension. This cost occurs for both types of competition – competition for monetary payoffs and for non-monetary rewards. Ultimately, the size of this cost depends on the marginal benefit from any cooperation of low performers.

Through empirical research, this study aims to explore the role of competition and cooperation in coupling open innovation (OI).

In this study, the hierarchical regression analysis method was used to test each hypothesis.

Cooperation has an inverted U-shaped moderating effect between coupling OI and innovation performance. Competition negatively moderates the relationship between inbound-oriented coupling OI and innovation performance, and has an inverted U-shaped moderating effect between outbound-oriented coupling OI and innovation performance. When competition and cooperation coexist, competition will passivate the moderating effect of cooperation between inbound-oriented coupling OI and innovation performance, and sharpen the moderating effect of cooperation between outbound-oriented coupling OI and innovation performance.

The role of competition and cooperation on different types of coupled innovation is studied for the first time. This research greatly enriches the theory of the effect of innovation network on innovation performance.

In this paper, the authors contribute with insights on competition and cooperation in multinational enterprises with a focus on challenges related to these governance mechanisms in a knowledge development context. The mechanisms have been widely recognized as important for developing knowledge, but their contradicting nature implies considerable complexity when it comes to governance. The complexity is further increased as a result of the headquarters-subsidiary relationships. The aim of this paper is to contribute with theoretical and empirical insights on these aspects by focusing on the research question: How and why does competition and cooperation in an MNE emerge over time?

A manufacturing MNE with headquarters (HQ) in Sweden is analyzed on both HQ and subsidiary levels. Interviews with 24 managers in Sweden and India have been performed.

The study illustrates that competition and cooperation are integral aspects in HQ-subsidiary relationships. The results show that both competition and cooperation depend on environmental, organizational and object-related conditions and that these conditions influence the dynamics of the interplay. The importance of including a subsidiary perspective and the interdependencies in an MNE setting are emphasized.

The authors add to the discussion on the interplay between competition and cooperation as they play an important role for knowledge development in MNEs. The results indicate that they do not take place simultaneously, and therefore, the authors suggest that the dynamic can be better understood by focusing on the interplay and analyze the concepts separately.

Underpinned by paradox theory, this study aims to investigate how and when intragroup cooperation and competition combine to drive individual creativity. It further examines how group goal orientation influences individuals’ creative processes by underscoring its effect on individuals' tendency to adopt a paradox lens.

A time-lagged survey was conducted with 85 leaders and 420 employees in Chinese high-tech companies that were actively engaged in innovative activities.

The results reveal that pure cooperation or pure competition exerts no significant influence on creativity, yet simultaneous high levels of cooperation and competition give rise to strong levels of creativity. This combined effect of cooperation and competition on employees' creativity could be explained by their changes in cognitive flexibility. Moreover, employees' flexible responses to high levels of cooperation and competition could be promoted when groups enact learning goals rather than performance goals.

This study provides a theoretical perspective on how cooperation and competition can be contingent upon each other. It also highlights the role of group learning goals when members strive to be creative in groups with high levels of competition and cooperation.

This paper aims to explore the complete process and underlying mechanism that social enterprises obtain legitimacy during interactions with stakeholders from theoretical integration of institutional theory and organization ecology perspective.

Based on theoretical classification, this paper selects six typical Chinese social enterprises and conducts a multi-case analysis.

The study finds that social enterprises aim at legitimizing single entity or industry and shaping stakeholders’ cognitive boundary simultaneously. Therefore, by adopting constrained cooperation and competition activities, social enterprises use normative isomorphism to achieve personal legitimation and combining ecological niche construction, social enterprises achieve organizational legitimation. By adopting fragmented cooperation-dominant or competition-dominant activities, social enterprises use mimic isomorphism supplemented by competitive isomorphism or population structure creation to obtain industry legitimation. By adopting dynamically integrated coopetition activities, social enterprises use mimic isomorphism and reflexive isomorphism to reach field legitimation.

This paper proposes a mechanism model that the coopetition with stakeholders influences the legitimation process, identifies four stages of social enterprise’s legitimation process and the types of legitimacy obtained in each stage and fills the gap of Chinese indigenous social enterprise research.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical framework that explains the roles and viability of both cooperation and competition as they emerge in communities of practice. Although the usefulness of cooperation in communities of practice is well-understood, few studies have considered the role of internal competition, and those that have generally only explored cases in which antagonistic behavior led to the community’s collapse.

A contingency theory of communities of practice is developed based on the manifestations of members’ participation.

This theory demonstrates the root causes of fracturing and also provides a foundation for studying communities of practice that have previously defied explanation.

This manuscript explains the potential role and limitations of internal competition in communities of practice, as well as the emergence of subgroups based on differing preferences for cooperation and/or competition. Future research should examine the manifestation and ramifications of such individual differences between community members.

Practitioners can use this theoretical framework to assess communities of practice that they oversee, diagnose potential pitfalls and take corrective action to mitigate potentially toxic influences or inject additional motivating forces that would sustain the community.

This theoretical framework diverges from previous assumptions that internal competition is necessarily toxic for communities of practice, showing the value that it may offer in some contexts.

This study aims to understand the coevolution and coexistence of cooperation and competition in the interorganizational collaboration of management consulting firms (MCFs) in India.

The narrative inquiry method was applied to understand the central phenomenon. The narrative inquiry method was found pertinent because the aim of the research was to inquire human-based phenomenon, especially life experiences, tensions, feeling, thought processes, emotions and personal puzzles. Narrations from 47 respondents from 32 MCFs from various consortiums were collected to make textual and phenomenal narrative inquiry. Finally, causal relationships were designed using the mapping method.

The study noticed coevolution and coexistence of cooperation and competition in the MCF consortiums. Cooperation was higher than the competition at the entry level, and the competition was higher than cooperation at the operational level of the consortium life cycle. Organizational side of coopetition was higher than human side of coopetition at the entry level, and human side of coopetition was higher than organizational side of coopetition at the operational level. A higher level of competition (than cooperation) pushes the consortium beyond the threshold level, creating a lesser value creation. Further higher level of competition (than cooperation) shoved the consortium beyond the injury limit, leading the consortium to collapse.

This study paid major attention on the human side and organizational side of coopetition from the life cycle perspective, but the findings and discussions concentrated more on entry level and operational level. The study, in fact, did not capture the status of coopetition at the termination phase of the consortium.

This study is one of the few studies that examined cooperation and competition as a single construct in interorganizational collaboration in the management consulting industry. This study is unique in two ways, one, examination from the human side of coopetition and organizational side of coopetition, and two, life cycle analysis of the consortium from the perspective of coopetition.

Building on a business network perspective, the paper addresses the following question: Why do firms move between cooperation and competition in the context of high-tech industry? Hence, the purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the complex cooperation–competition interplay between actors in a business network.

A single case study within the information and communication technology industry is undertaken and illustrates the cooperation–competition interplay in projects of technology.

The authors discuss the implications of interdependence on relationship dynamics. The main argument is that business relationships survive despite periods of competition if interdependence is high. Thus, firms move between a state of cooperation and a state of competition within business relationships, rather than ending the relationships when starting to compete.

This study suggests that managers need to pay attention to how different degrees of interdependence lead firms to be embedded in cooperative or competitive forms of relationships.

The paper contributes to the ongoing debate about cooperation, competition and coopetition within international business and industrial marketing literature. An interesting aspect in the paper is the cooperation–competition interplay, which is associated with positioning. A centrally positioned actor will choose who to bring into the partnership, with positioning concomitantly changing from project to project. The willingness of being a central actor, i.e. a project leader, places traditional buyer–supplier partners in competition. Thus, cooperation and/or competition becomes contextual.

This study aims to explore how team task-related social media usage (TSMU) and social-related social media usage (SSMU) affect employees' perceptions of intra-team cooperation and competition and further individual creativity.

This study conducted a questionnaire survey on enterprises in China that have implemented social media and obtained 348 useable questionnaires from 55 work teams.

The results revealed that employees' perceptions of intra-team cooperation and competition can promote employees' creativity. Employees' cooperation perception can be significantly positively affected by TSMU and SSMU, whereas employees' competition perception can be significantly positively affected by TSMU. Regarding congruence, the results indicated that the more balanced between TSMU and SSMU, the stronger the competition perception.

Managers should pay critical attention to the role of team social media usage (SMU) in shaping employees' perceptions of their team environments. They should realize the different outcomes and the joint effects of the different types of SMU.

This study contributes to the social media literature by explaining the impact of team SMU on employees' perceptions and evaluations of team environments based on the social information processing theory. The study presents the relationships among team SMU, employees' perceptions of cooperation and competition and employee creativity. Moreover, this study expands research on the trade-off of SMU by exploring the impact of balanced and imbalanced SMU in a work team.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptually develop the understanding of co‐opetition dynamics and to enhance the conceptual clarity of co‐opetition by developing a definition based on previous research efforts.

This conceptual paper integrates various approaches to the concept co‐opetition into a definition that holds for co‐opetitive interactions across multiple levels. Different co‐opetitive interactions and the resulting dynamics are discussed by drawing upon competition and cooperation theories. The paper concludes with an agenda for further research on co‐opetition dynamics.

The paper outlines how different types of co‐opetitive interactions result in archetypical situations where the dynamics of co‐opetition are present as well as where the dynamics of co‐opetition are missing due to a lack of balance between cooperation and competition. It notes four co‐opetitive forces: over‐embedding, distancing, confronting, and colluding. These four forces drive development towards situations without dynamics.

This paper provides a conceptual understanding of co‐opetition dynamics and will reveal that in order to adequately account for co‐opetition dynamics, a definition of co‐opetition must analytically separate the cooperative and the competitive interaction inherent in co‐opetition.