Cross-Functional “Coopetition”: The Simultaneous Role of Cooperation and Competition Within Firms

Abstract

Extant marketing literature tends to view cross-functional relationships as primarily cooperative or competitive in nature, but not both. In contrast, this research focuses on cross-functional "coopetition" (i.e., the joint occurrence of cooperation and competition across functional areas within a firm). Using responses from midlevel managers and top executives, the authors find that cross-functional coopetition enhances a firm's customer and financial performance. The authors further show that this influence is mediated by market learning, indicating that performance returns to cross-functional coopetition occurs through an underlying learning mechanism.

Contextual ambidexterity in SMEs: the roles of internal and external rivalry

“…Interactions among managers who hold different functional expertise entail their contrasting thoughtworlds (Griffin and Hauser 1996) and cultures (Gupta et al 1986), which makes free and open knowledge exchange difficult (De Luca and Atuahene-Gima 2007). Notably, both concerns about internal fights for resources (Luo et al 2006) and external competitive pressures (Maltz and Kohli 1996) may determine the ease of integrating established and new pieces of knowledge across the firm. Accordingly, we explicate two contextual factors that may act as key boundary conditions for the effective translation of contextual ambidexterity into SME performance.…”

“…Internal rivalry refers to the extent to which individual managers perceive their peers as competitors for company resources (Houston et al 2001;Luo et al 2006)-whether tangible resources such as financial or human capital or intangible resources such as the attention of the firm's key decision makers (Ocasio 1997). Managers operating in different functional areas might compete with one another in their pursuit of divergent goals and strategic priorities (Houston et al 2001;Ruekert and Walker 1987), particularly when they are subject to comparisons of their performance outputs (Maltz and Kohli 1996).…”

“…Although some resource competition might directly improve certain firm-level outcomes, such as the ability to solve customer needs (Luo et al, 2006), it likely is problematic for the successful implementation of a complex strategic posture, such as contextual ambidexterity (Adler et al 1999;Fauchart and Keilbach 2009). Not only might individual managers be hesitant to share their own function-specific knowledge with others, for fear that competing colleagues could benefit from such knowledge, but they also may refrain from applying others' knowledge, because doing so could increase the value of that knowledge, in the eyes of the firm's key decision makers (Gupta and Govindarajan 2000).…”

“…Following claims that competitive elements underlying intra-firm knowledge may play instrumental roles with regard to the performance effects of firms' innovation strategies (Luo et al 2006;Song, Dyer, and Thieme 2006;Tsai 2002), we investigate how the benefits of ambidexterity may depend on contingency factors that capture internal and external rivalry pressures. Thus, we adopt a contingency perspective (Song et al 2006;Song and Xie 2000) to explicate how conditions that inform intra-firm knowledge exchange influence the relationship between ambidexterity and SME performance.…”

Coopetition Strategies in the Brazilian Higher Education

“…Thus, the heterogeneity of resources can stimulate cooperation to make this an advantage for the firms (Bengtsson & Kock, 2000). Moreover, the transfer of knowledge through cooperation and competition between firms can increase the customer base and financial performance (Luo, Slotegraaf, & Pan, 2006). Considering the need for resources for greater engagement on cooperation, larger HEIs may not be as committed as smaller HEIs.…”