Search results

This study aims to identify and accurately assess the risk factors of competitors’ cooperation in the NPD project.

New product development (NPD) is essential to the survival of companies and surpassing other competitors. A key prerequisite for the success of an NPD project is the timing of new product delivery to the market. The main challenge faced by many project managers is the delay in execution and completion phases due to the complex nature and uncertainty of these projects. Rival companies' cooperation reduces the time spent on an NPD project which is an excellent way to reduce the risk of losing the market, but it increases other risk factors.

Based on the results, the security and confidentiality of innovation, the competitors attracting human resources and the company’s brand credibility factors were ranked higher than other factors and should be predicted and managed before cooperating with competitors.

This paper proposed a new model to assess risk factors in cooperation with rival companies in NPD projects. This model takes into account new parameters, for example, negative and positive risks, negative and positive passable risks and risk-based multi-objective optimization by ratio analysis plus full multiplicative form methodology for the rival companies cooperation in NPD projects. To evaluate the efficiency of the proposed model, a real case of the R&D unit of Iran Khodro Company was studied.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating factors that could affect the relationship between coopetition (the interplay between cooperation and competition) and company performance.

Under the relational view and resource-based theory, key articles surrounding coopetition were reviewed. A conceptual framework (with six research propositions) was developed to understand the nature of the relationship between coopetition and company performance.

While the coopetition – company performance relationship has been well-studied, this link could be moderated by the competitive business environment, organizational resources and capabilities, and trust between rivals. Further, most authors have explored the linear relationship between coopetition and company performance; however, in this paper, the non-linear (inverted U-shaped) link is also conceptualized, whereby firms might experience “too little” and “too much” coopetition in their business strategies.

Management teams should engage in an “optimal-level” of coopetition by sharing resources and capabilities with rival firms, but not to the extent where they depend on such competitors. If firms rarely collaborate with their competitors, they risk not being able to achieve their performance objectives. Likewise, if businesses engage in excessive degrees of coopetition, there could be tensions between the rival companies involved. Also, practitioners should be aware of the factors that can improve or reduce their performance when they implement coopetition activities. By taking: the competitive business environment, organizational resources and capabilities, and trust between rivals into consideration, the themes of this paper should be used to help managers to maximize company performance (considered in multiple capacities).

This paper is used to help scholars and practitioners to understand the factors that could help or hinder the performance outcomes of coopetition activities. By appreciating the moderating roles of the competitive business environment, organizational resources and capabilities, and trust between rivals, managers are anticipated to provide themselves with scope to alter their coopetition activities to improve their performance. This article ends with a series of managerial implications, alongside some limitations and avenues for future research.

Coopetition is the interplay between cooperation and competition, involving organisations sharing resources and capabilities with rival entities. Earlier work has suggested that coopetition has a linear (positive) relationship with company performance, with scarce considerations towards whether this link could have a diminishing-returns effect. Thus, this paper aims to examine the non-linear (quadratic) relationships between coopetition and three performance outcomes. Using resource-based theory and the relational view, this study is designed to evaluate the dark side of coopetition, in terms of identifying situations when such activities can be harmful for company performance.

Survey data were collected from a sample of 101 vineyards and wineries in New Zealand. After purifying the measures through a series of multivariate statistical techniques, the research hypotheses and control paths were tested through hierarchical regression. Furthermore, the statistical data passed all major assessments of reliability and validity (including common method variance).

Coopetition was found to have non-linear (quadratic) relationships with customer satisfaction performance, market performance, and financial performance. These results indicate that while coopetition provides organisations with new resources, capabilities and opportunities, there are some dark sides of coopetition activities. With “too little” coopetition, firms might struggle to survive within their markets, with an insufficient volume of resources and capabilities. With “too much” coopetition, companies could experience increased tensions, potentially lose intellectual property and dilute their competitive advantages. Such negative outcomes could harm their performance in several capacities.

Firms should appreciate that coopetition is a competitive strategy. In other words, regardless of how much collaboration occurs, coopetition partners are still competing entities. It is recommended that organisations should strive to engage in an “optimal-level” of coopetition, as “too little” or “too much” of such strategies can be harmful for various types of company performance. To mitigate some of the dark sides of coopetition, businesses should attempt to use all the benefits of collaborating with competitors (i.e. accessing new resources, capabilities and opportunities), but at the same time, not become dependent on rivals’ assets.

This paper develops and tests a framework examining the non-linear (quadratic) linkages between coopetition and multiple assessments of company performance. It highlights the benefits and drawbacks of businesses sharing resources and capabilities with their competitors. Contrary to prior studies in the business-to-business marketing literature, the results signify that firms need to engage in an “optimal-level” of coopetition to minimise certain dark sides, such as reduced company performance. After providing some practitioner implications, this paper ends with a series of limitations and avenues for future research.

Coopetition, namely, the interplay between cooperation and competition, has received a good deal of interest in the business-to-business marketing literature. Academics have operationalised the coopetition construct and have used these measures to test the antecedents and consequences of firms collaborating with their competitors. However, business-to-business marketing scholars have not developed and validated an agreed operationalisation that reflects the dimensionality of the coopetition construct. Thus, the purpose of this study is to develop and validate a multi-dimensional measure of coopetition for marketing scholars to use in future research.

To use a highly cooperative and highly competitive empirical context, sporting organisations in New Zealand were sampled, as the key informants within these entities engaged in different forms of coopetition. Checks were made to ensure that the sampled entities produced generalisable results. That is, it is anticipated that the results apply to other industries with firms engaging in similar business-to-business behaviours. Various sources of qualitative and quantitative data were acquired to develop and validate a multi-dimensional measure of coopetition (the COOP scale), which passed all major assessments of reliability and validity (including common method variance).

The results indicated that coopetition is a multi-dimensional construct, comprising three distinct dimensions. First, local-level coopetition is collaboration among competing entities within a close geographic proximity. Second, national-level coopetition is cooperation with rivals within the same country but across different geographic regions. Third, organisation-level coopetition is cooperation with competitors across different firms (including with indirect rivals), regardless of their geographic location and product markets served. Indeed, organisation-level coopetition extends to how companies engage in coopetition in domestic and international capacities, depending on the extent to which they compete in similar product markets in comparison to industry rivals. Also, multiple indicators were used to measure each facet of the coopetition construct after the scale purification stage.

Prior coopetition-based investigations have predominately been conceptual or qualitative in nature. The scarce number of existing scales have significant problems, such as not appreciating that coopetition is a multi-dimensional variable, as well as using single indicators. In spite of a recent call for research on the multiple levels of coopetition, there has not been an agreed measure of the construct that accounts for its multi-dimensionality. Hence, this investigation responds to such a call for research by developing and validating the COOP scale. Local-, national- and organisation-level coopetition are anticipated to be the main facets of the coopetition construct, which offer several avenues for future research.

Competition and cooperation co‐exist in various sub‐fields of organizational strategies, while a research gap remains in the links between how managers perceive their cognitive relations with rival partners and how they choose a strategy. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different focuses of competition and cooperation are put in core and supportive strategic importance based on business manager's individual perception toward a particular rivalling cognition.

A conceptual model is developed composed by several hypotheses. An empirical study is conducted by analysing data collected from 89 pharmacies, including public hospital pharmacies and community service, private chain retailing pharmacy, and independent pharmacies, out of hundreds of outlets in a capital city in China to test hypotheses. By using factor analysis and correlation analysis, several hypotheses are supported in linking competitive cognition with either core marketing strategies or supportive marketing strategies.

Observational results indicate that large and small pharmacies, motivated by relational perceptions among competitors, tend to rely selectively on some strategic tools of competition and cooperation in terms of their different business nature.

These results are valuable for business managers in the healthcare industry, enabling them to rethink their relations with strategic partners and their strategies.

The paper's findings enrich understanding of how a competing environment influences strategic orientation of competition and cooperation under a collaborative marketing framework.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Balancing interfirm relationships is important for firms’ long-term superior performance. However, prior studies mainly focus on interfirm competition or interfirm cooperation separately, ignoring the balance of interfirm relationships. To bridge this gap in knowledge, this study aims to develop a framework to evaluate the balance of interfirm competition and interfirm cooperation and propose strategies to optimize a firm’s interfirm relationships.

After an in-depth literature review, a framework was developed for evaluating and optimizing the interfirm relationships. Taking the high-speed railway industry as an example, the proposed framework was implemented.

The results of the case confirm that the balancing of interfirm relationships can lead to more superior firm performance. Also, rather than mutual suppression, the interfirm competition and interfirm cooperation present a roughly positive relationship.

This study would contribute to the existing knowledge body by developing a framework for balancing interfirm relationships. Also, this study can aid practitioners in evaluating and optimizing their interfirm relationship structures.

The purpose of this study is to explore the facets, antecedents and consequences of coopetition using three dimensions of entrepreneurial marketing. Coopetition is the interplay between competition and cooperation in which companies seek to collaborate with their rivals with the aim of enhancing performance compared to if they operated independently.

This paper reports on 38 interviews across 25 firms competing in the New Zealand wine industry. Triangulation procedures were via primary and secondary methods. This data was analysed through a series of techniques to produce credible findings.

Coopetition is comprised of resource- and capability-sharing activities. These activities are driven by an industry-wide cooperative mind-set; also, firms having access to competitors’ resources and capabilities. Coopetition was found to increase performance in ways that would not be possible if firms did not collaborate with their rivals.

Previous studies have focused on the facets and consequences of coopetition rather than its antecedents. Whilst exploration of these facets was undertaken in this study to reinforce prior research, this paper also investigates the antecedents of coopetition underpinned by the resource-based theory to contribute to the entrepreneurial marketing literature.

Coopetition includes cooperation and competition, sometimes simultaneously, among firms from a specific industry involved in a merger and acquisition (M&A) operation. However, despite their high number, most mergers end in failure. Therefore, looking at how firms cooperate and compete when planning a merger operation can be a key to better understand post-merger integration, set achievable synergies for both parties and better understand the organizational culture of both companies. Also, external events in a rapidly changing environment can affect the global strategy of organizations and impact the desire for firms to engage in mergers and acquisitions.

The author investigates how merger negotiations were conducted and influence coopetition among two firms engaged in such an operation. The author describes the project merger of two French companies using longitudinal data.

This in-depth case study provides new insights into coopetition dynamics during merger negotiations and the influence of a global crisis on the overall strategy of two firms. The authors specifically detail how cooperation and competition were present in M&A negotiations and how the rapidly changing environment influenced the planned operation. First, cooperation was privileged as companies enhanced information sharing and communication for their joint strategy. Then, with the evolution of the environment, new opportunities were given to the target company, which decided to quit the merger project. Therefore, both firms engaged in a competitive context as the crisis helped the target company (in difficulty at the beginning of negotiations) to develop new projects and to become a real rival of the acquiring company in its local ecosystem.

The limitations are those concerning a single case study.

The study highlights the complexity of merger negotiations and the unexpected events faced by integration stakeholders. The analysis, thus, contributes to an inclusive and integrative view of the challenges in the merger process. The study questions coopetition issues in regional clusters as both firms operate in the same industry in the same region. For practitioners, the study questions how to balance the risks and rewards of coopetition activities over time. The case addresses information sharing in coopetition projects and the fear that the data and information revealed during negotiations will affect the company’s competitive advantage once the merger plan is abandoned. In the context of the rapidly changing environmental crisis, managers will reflect on continuing to cooperate with their competitors or pursuing their activities on their own.

Despite their high number, M&A failures remain surprisingly high. This study explores how stakeholders deal with merger negotiations and how external events impact such negotiations and merger projects by raising coopetitive tensions among firms.

The case provides a vivid illustration of firms’ adaptation to a rapidly evolving context due to a global crisis. The research questions coopetition in business ecosystems and the unexpected in merger processes. The study addresses critical risks in knowledge exchange during merger negotiations and coopetitive dynamics among stakeholders over time. Theoretical concepts and empirical findings from the literature are combined to present a single consistent picture.

Rather than focussing on dyadic distributor–supplier relationships, this study aims to examine whether the difference in transaction-specific investments (TSIs) between rival suppliers in a supplier–distributor–supplier triad influences whether distributors expropriate or maintain their supplier’s TSIs.

Drawing on triadic data from 276 questionnaires that address both the supplier–distributor relationship and the rival supplier–distributor relationship, a moderated regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses.

Five out of six hypotheses are supported by the empirical test. The results show that the supplier’s TSIs increase the distributor’s opportunistic behaviour and reduce cooperation when the distributor perceives that the supplier’s TSIs are lower than those of a rival supplier. In contrast, when the distributor perceives that the supplier’s TSIs are higher than those of a competitor, the supplier’s TSIs do not improve cooperation and can shift the link between the supplier’s TSIs and the distributor’s opportunism from being positive to negative.

The findings have implications for the top managers of supplier firms embedded in distribution networks. This study suggests that the competitor’s TSIs can be regarded as an indicator of the supplier’s relationship with the distributor. By keeping an eye on their competitors’ TSIs, the top managers of suppliers can predict the likelihood of distributors’ opportunistic and cooperative behaviour and make efforts to improve their position by adjusting their own firm’s TSIs. Furthermore, this information can help suppliers decide on their investment strategies and maintain stable and healthy relationships.

This study 1) examines the effect of TSIs using a triadic framework and triadic data and demonstrates that how a distributor responds to a supplier’s TSIs, with either opportunism or cooperation, depends on the relative level of those TSIs in focal and competitive relationships; and 2) reveals the expropriation effects and restraint effects of TSIs by drawing on prospect theory. This finding indicates the dynamics of TSIs in a triadic relationship.