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This study aims to examine the critical role of types of coopetition (upstream/downstream), market structure (concentrated/competitive) and innovation (low vs high degree of innovation) that can affect the way consumers perceive the resulting price (un)fairness of new offerings.

Three between-subjects experiments involving different participant populations and product categories were conducted to test the research hypotheses.

The valence of the effect of types of coopetition (upstream/downstream) on price fairness is conditional on the market structure and the degree of innovation associated with the new product offering. Downstream (as opposed to upstream) coopetition is much more detrimental to perceptions of price fairness in a concentrated market than in a competitive and fragmented market. However, within a competitive market, downstream coopetition may lead to greater price fairness perception than upstream coopetition when the new product offering is highly innovative.

The current study uses lab experiments with fictitious scenarios and focuses on two moderating variables: market structure and innovation perceptions. Future research may use field experiments and explore additional moderating variables that may annihilate the negative effect of downstream coopetition on price fairness perception, especially in a concentrated market.

In concentrated markets, firms should opt for upstream rather than downstream coopetition to limit the negative effect the announcement of coopetition has on price fairness evaluation. However, within a competitive market, when the new product offering resulting from coopetition is associated with a high perceived degree of innovation, firms should opt for downstream rather than upstream coopetition because of its positive impact on price fairness evaluation.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate that new product development from coopetition has important implications for the perception of price fairness, leading to positive or negative effects depending on market structure and the degree of innovation of the new product offering. It then explores the conditions under which types of coopetition (upstream/downstream) might backfire.

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.

This study explores how firms develop innovation ecosystems through forming alliances with suppliers and the effects on innovation, economics and consumer welfare.

This study develops two game theory models to compare supply chain structures with and without ecosystem alignment. (1) A single supplier provides components to two competing manufacturers (one innovative and one non-innovative). (2) An innovative manufacturer (focal firm) aligns with a supplier that also supplies components to a competing manufacturer.

An ecosystem construction strategy that alliances use to reconfigure coopetitive relationships and ecosystem alignment is identified. A manufacturer aligning with a supplier will strengthen the monopoly of the alignment, which is beneficial to both Allies but always harmful to the competitor. Interestingly, such an ecosystem construction strategy may be beneficial to future innovation, the industry and consumers.

The findings raise several topics that warrant further exploration. For example, scenarios with multiple suppliers were not considered. Furthermore, the implementation of regulatory measures to mitigate the harmful effects of alignment on innovation should be investigated.

This paper provides a guide for enterprises seeking alignment and to the corresponding measures required to stimulate innovation within ecosystems. What’s more, the aligned firm should not always attempt to win the race but should instead take measures to encourage the competitor to share demand information.

Firstly, most research on supply chain management has focused on its economic impacts. There is a lack of research on the influence of ecosystem alignment on the innovation incentives of firms. Furthermore, the literature still lacks evidence of how ecosystem construction strategies can increase consumer welfare. In the present study, the authors model a complex market structure that includes a competitor, which is becoming increasingly common in high-tech markets. Thirdly, this paper is one of the few that examines the impacts of market-structure changes on innovation incentives. Most importantly, this study extends the current literature by studying coopetition in the ecosystem context.

Increasing environmental uncertainty, more demanding customers, rapid technological growth and rising capital costs have all forced firms to evolve from collaborating with buyers and suppliers to collaborating with their competitors and that is called coopetition. The purpose of this paper is to better understand the antecedents and outcomes associated with coopetition.

Building from the existing literature and three theoretical foundations, resource-based theory, resource dependence theory and game theory, the authors develop a model showing the antecedents and outcomes of coopetition and associated propositions of coopetition. Using a semi-structured interview process of 21 industry executives, the authors offer empirical support for the proposed coopetition model and propositions.

Firms are increasingly dependent on the knowledge and expertise in external organizations to innovate, solve problems and improve supply chain performance. This research suggests that there is a value for firms to consider coopetition as a part of their inter-firm strategies.

The semi-structured interview process used in this research provided a wealth of information and executive experiences in coopetition. The interviews, however, only provide a single perspective of collaborative engagements with competitors. Multiple perspectives of each project would add value to this research.

Collaboration among buyers and suppliers have been well researched; however, there has not been as much research on coopetition. This research provides a new area for future research for academics and offers suggestions for managers to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their coopetition projects.

Coopetition is a well-studied phenomenon in traditional enterprises. However, it lacks deepening in the social sphere, specifically on hybrid organizations (social and commercial goals). This paper analyzes the configuration of coopetition strategies in social enterprises and how these strategies can improve social value devolution.

The authors conducted a multicase study with Brazilian social enterprises and a social incubator. Semistructured interviews with founders of the social enterprises and the president of the incubator were the primary sources of evidence, supported by observations and secondary data.

The authors identified four main findings: (1) the social incubator induces coopetition among social enterprises; (2) coopetition is necessary to improve market performance; (3) coopetition is a natural strategy resulting from the activity of the social enterprise; (4) the behavior and context of social enterprises generate a new framework for coopetition formation. This framework comprises three stages of value: a social cooperation level to co-creation of value; second, a social competition level to the appropriation of value; and the third coopetition-balanced level to social value devolution.

The authors advance knowledge on coopetition in an exciting, underexplored context, social entrepreneurship. The authors highlight that the coopetition nature and outcome in social enterprises have specificities compared to traditional businesses. The authors also improve the understanding of social value devolution based on simultaneous cooperation and competition among small social enterprises, allowing theoretical and practical implications. Thus, they advance the recurring discussion in coopetition literature beyond the generation and appropriation of value.

The present study considers disruption in the buyer–supplier–supplier triad. This triad has a common second-tier supplier as the disruption source, which gives us the tetradic context. The goal is to advance the knowledge on how a first-tier supplier's resilience against lower-tier disruptive events can be developed through horizontally connecting with the other first-tier supplier and how the buyer can benefit from its first-tier suppliers' resilience capability.

Data from 33 triads was collected and analyzed.

As predicted, coopetition between two first-tier suppliers increases the first-tier supplier's capability to be resilient to disruptive events emanating from a lower tier source. However, contrary to initial theorization, the first-tier supplier's resilience capability affects the buyer's performance during disruptive events negatively. With increasing buyer–supplier social bonds, this negative relationship can partly be alleviated.

Analyzing resilience within a triad to a disruption in the tetradic context reveals unexpected dynamics. Individual supplier's resilience may have a negative impact on the buyer's resilience in certain disruption events.

The buyer can increase collective suppliers' resilience through establishing horizontal links. To prevent becoming a victim of the supplier's resilience in the event of a second-tier disruption, a buyer needs to become a member of the supplier's relational network.

We propose that resilience can rest with the suppliers. This observation has implications for the buyer when selecting and coordinating suppliers. Further, it considers a context beyond a triad by venturing into the tetradic context. We anticipate more studies in tetrads in future and this study can serve as a bridge.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the knowledge gaps in the extant literature on the role of ambidexterity and coopetition in designing resilient fashion supply chains (RFSCs), and to develop a contextual framework for effective decision-making to enable practitioners to enhance their supply chain resilience.

The study adopts a novel multi-evidence-based approach comprising Denyer and Tranfield's (2009) systematic literature review (SLR) with context, intervention, mechanism and outcome (CIMO) logic, text mining and network analysis. The approach constitutes a rigorous methodology that cross-validates results and ensures the reliability and validity of findings.

The authors identified key knowledge gaps in the literature and explored the main contribution categories (e.g. conceptual understandings, operational impacts, use of theories and frameworks). Subsequently, we developed a contextual framework of ambidextrous coopetition to design RFSCs. Finally, an empirical research agenda is proposed with the five research directions to address the gap and take forward the notion of ambidextrous coopetition and RFSCs.

The multi-evidence-based approach is a structured and triangulated SLR approach and thus lacks empirical study.

This research proposes a contextual framework of ambidextrous coopetition that can be used by fashion companies to embed resilience into their structures and operations. This research also presents an agenda for the future empirical research.

This paper contributes by providing a combinatory synthesis on the role of ambidexterity and coopetition in designing RFSCs. This paper introduces a novel methodological triangulation for improving the quality and validity of SLRs. It identifies significant knowledge gaps and defines directions for future research.

This paper aims to extend the existing views of coopetition into the broader context of open coopetition.

The authors build on the literature about open innovation cooperation between competitors in the open-source software industry, which we generalize to show that open coopetition between competitors and third parties can be observed in other industries and institutional settings.

The authors outline a research program on the management challenges of open coopetition-related and argue that open coopetition can not only be observed between business rivals but also between partners from university, industry, government and further institutional backgrounds.

The authors introduce to so-far neglected roots of the emerging research program on open coopetition and extend the prevailing business focus of open coopetition research to also systematically include open coopetition between partners from business and other spheres of society.

The purpose of this study is to increase understanding about vertical coopetition from the perspective of interrelated conflict episodes on multiple levels.

The empirical part is based on a qualitative single case study of a coopetitive buyer-supplier relationship in the manufacturing sector.

Conflicts in vertical coopetition evolve from being merely functional and task-related to becoming dysfunctional and relationship-related, as the level of competition increases. The nature of conflict episodes influences the development of vertical coopetition, and therefore, the interrelatedness of conflict episodes is important to acknowledge.

Although a conflict is considered functional within a company, it may still be dysfunctional as far as the coopetitive relationship with the buyer or seller is concerned. Competition may trigger conflicts related to protecting own technology and knowledge, which may lead to termination of the cooperation, therefore coopetition should be managed in a way that balance sharing and protecting important knowledge to get advantages of coopetition.

The findings enhance prior research on vertical coopetition by offering new perspectives on causes of conflicts, their management, outcomes and types. The value of taking a multilevel approach lies in the ability to show how conflicts occur and influence other conflicts through the interrelatedness of conflict elements on different levels.

The reality of today’s business world is based both on cooperation and competition, or coopetition. There is, however, a lot of diversity within the field of coopetition research, and the research within this field is moreover only at an emerging stage. The purpose of this study is to explore the nature of coopetition by recognizing actor and operational levels of coopetition. The nature of the paper is conceptual. The findings of the paper show that most of the previous research about coopetition has been on an interfirm level – that is, related to cooperation between companies. Further, it is possible to argue that the studies have mostly focused on cooperation between competitors. In the majority of the existing studies, coopetition is treated as a strategy, and not as something natural. The theoretical contribution of this paper is that it gives scholars within the area of coopetition a broad theoretical background, which is useful for future research. From a managerial perspective, the findings demonstrate the multifaceted nature of coopetition.