Dating back to Brandenburger and Nalebuff (1996)’s seminal work, management scholars have started recognizing that inter-firm interdependences across multiple industries are characterized by strictly intertwined features of competition and cooperation. Coopetition is the way these inter-firm interdependences have been labeled (e.g., Brandenburger and Nalebuff, 1996). While the “flavour” of coopetition has been to some extent present since Adam Smith (see our comments below on Smith’s (1759) Theory of Moral Sentiments), the recent and steady increase in the attitude of firms to cooperate has made this phenomenon much more visible and has started sparkling considerable interest on coopetition as a stream of research on its own. We claim that understanding inter-firm interdependences as a coopetitive game provides new challenges in the strategic behavior of the firms and claim for the need to develop a novel managerial mindset and a coopetitive strategy (Dagnino, 2007). Whereas various authors (Brandenburger and Nalebuff, 1996; Lado, Boyd and Hanlon, 1997; Bengtsson and Kock, 1999; Gnyawali and Madhavan, 2001) have emphasized the growing importance of coopetition for today’s interfirm dynamics, scientific investigation on the issue of coopetition is at the beginning of its lifecycle (Walley, 2007; Tidstrom, 2008). Accordingly coopetition is a theme that tends to attract increasing attention from both strategy research (Baglieri, Dagnino, Giarratana and Gutierrez 2008) and practice (Dagnino and Rocco, 2009). This chapter contributes to the debate on coopetition by providing an analytical understanding of the nature of coopetition and claiming for the need to recognize its challenging implications for strategy. By suggesting that coopetition is a matter of “incomplete interest (and goal) congruence” shaping firms’ interdependence (Padula and Dagnino, 2007), we point up that coopetition does not simply emerge from coupling competition and cooperation issues, but it rather implies that cooperation and competition merge together to form a new kind of strategic interdependence between firms, giving rise to a coopetitive system of value creation (Dagnino, 2009). This argument urges to recognize the emergence of a new managerial mindset to steer interfirm dynamics. Incidentally, it is interesting to recall that, as early as in the nineteenth century, two founding fathers and early presidents of the United States of America, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, were meaningfully termed as “rival friends”. Actually, they had been initially good friends and then fierce political opponents in different periods of their long lifetimes. Notwithstanding that, at sunset of their lives at that time retired in their respective buen retiros, they started and maintained a pretty intense correspondence, wherein each of them, while accepting to openly and serenely confront it with the other’s opinion, retained his appraisal on a variety of subject matters. This book chapter is organized as follows. It first provides an analytical content to the concept of coopetition as a synthesis between two opposite, ideal perspectives – i.e., competition and cooperation. In doing so, it starts illustrating the limitations of the two perspectives and then move to show analytically how these limitations are overcome and accommodated within the new understanding of firms dynamics provided by coopetiton. Then, this book chapter describes some basic properties that shape the context of coopetition and illustrates the challenges that coopetition procures to the firms, claiming for the need to develop a novel managerial mindset that may guide a new (coopetitive) strategic behaviour.

Coopetition: Nature, Challenges and Implications for Firms' Strategic Behavior and Managerial Mindset

PADULA, GIOVANNA
2012

Abstract

Dating back to Brandenburger and Nalebuff (1996)’s seminal work, management scholars have started recognizing that inter-firm interdependences across multiple industries are characterized by strictly intertwined features of competition and cooperation. Coopetition is the way these inter-firm interdependences have been labeled (e.g., Brandenburger and Nalebuff, 1996). While the “flavour” of coopetition has been to some extent present since Adam Smith (see our comments below on Smith’s (1759) Theory of Moral Sentiments), the recent and steady increase in the attitude of firms to cooperate has made this phenomenon much more visible and has started sparkling considerable interest on coopetition as a stream of research on its own. We claim that understanding inter-firm interdependences as a coopetitive game provides new challenges in the strategic behavior of the firms and claim for the need to develop a novel managerial mindset and a coopetitive strategy (Dagnino, 2007). Whereas various authors (Brandenburger and Nalebuff, 1996; Lado, Boyd and Hanlon, 1997; Bengtsson and Kock, 1999; Gnyawali and Madhavan, 2001) have emphasized the growing importance of coopetition for today’s interfirm dynamics, scientific investigation on the issue of coopetition is at the beginning of its lifecycle (Walley, 2007; Tidstrom, 2008). Accordingly coopetition is a theme that tends to attract increasing attention from both strategy research (Baglieri, Dagnino, Giarratana and Gutierrez 2008) and practice (Dagnino and Rocco, 2009). This chapter contributes to the debate on coopetition by providing an analytical understanding of the nature of coopetition and claiming for the need to recognize its challenging implications for strategy. By suggesting that coopetition is a matter of “incomplete interest (and goal) congruence” shaping firms’ interdependence (Padula and Dagnino, 2007), we point up that coopetition does not simply emerge from coupling competition and cooperation issues, but it rather implies that cooperation and competition merge together to form a new kind of strategic interdependence between firms, giving rise to a coopetitive system of value creation (Dagnino, 2009). This argument urges to recognize the emergence of a new managerial mindset to steer interfirm dynamics. Incidentally, it is interesting to recall that, as early as in the nineteenth century, two founding fathers and early presidents of the United States of America, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, were meaningfully termed as “rival friends”. Actually, they had been initially good friends and then fierce political opponents in different periods of their long lifetimes. Notwithstanding that, at sunset of their lives at that time retired in their respective buen retiros, they started and maintained a pretty intense correspondence, wherein each of them, while accepting to openly and serenely confront it with the other’s opinion, retained his appraisal on a variety of subject matters. This book chapter is organized as follows. It first provides an analytical content to the concept of coopetition as a synthesis between two opposite, ideal perspectives – i.e., competition and cooperation. In doing so, it starts illustrating the limitations of the two perspectives and then move to show analytically how these limitations are overcome and accommodated within the new understanding of firms dynamics provided by coopetiton. Then, this book chapter describes some basic properties that shape the context of coopetition and illustrates the challenges that coopetition procures to the firms, claiming for the need to develop a novel managerial mindset that may guide a new (coopetitive) strategic behaviour.
2012
9781847200440
G.B. Dagnino
Handbook of Research on Competitive Strategy
G. B., Dagnino; M. C., Di Guardo; Padula, Giovanna
File in questo prodotto:
Non ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11565/3714137
 Attenzione

Attenzione! I dati visualizzati non sono stati sottoposti a validazione da parte dell'ateneo

Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 8
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? 8
social impact