Capturing the broader picture of value co-creation management

The interactional, interdependent, and dynamic nature of value co-creation has made value management in business relationships a particularly challenging issue for both academicians and practitioners. In addition, studies on this topic have mostly focused on managing value co-creation in isolation from the wider relational context without completely capturing the influence of other value processes on value co-creation. This paper examines the broader picture of value co-creation management by providing a model based on interlinked value processes, namely, value communication, value appropriation, value measurement, and value representation. We adopted a qualitative approach based on 86 interviews with managers of both customer and supplier companies, which operated in different industries. Results showed that the management of value co-creation implies considering complex patterns of interconnections with other value processes. In particular, the study will shed light on the centrality of value appropriation to co-create value and on the importance of value representation to coordinate ideas and enable future co-creation opportunities.     

How rival partners compete based on cooperation?

Prior studies of coopetition have explained the what, how and why of firms cooperating with competitors. Among these, examining the how question as to the stream of coopetition dynamics is the most challenging theme. Previous research has focused much more on the cooperation side. Less attention has been paid to the competition side to reveal what happens to competition after the competitors have collaborated. This study sheds light on the issue of cooperation-based competition by answering the question: while cooperating with competitors, how do rival partners compete based on cooperation? Linking the competitive dynamics perspective to coopetition, we conducted a single-case study to analyse the competition between two leading competitors in the Taiwanese bicycle industry. We collected the reported issues pertaining to the competition in the European market and supported by in-depth interviews. The analysis leads us to develop three propositions and a conceptual framework for illustrating the cooperation-based competition and addressing how cooperation may influence competition in a coopetition relationship. This study provides new insights into a theoretical issue of cooperation-based competition. The case also provides management implications while taking a coopetition strategy.     

动态环境下联盟竞合、治理机制与创新绩效的关系研究

本文从竞合视角审视联盟组合,结合动态关系观探讨有效的联盟治理机制,揭示了联盟组合中竞合关系(横向竞合、纵向竞合)、治理机制(契约治理、关系治理)和创新绩效之间的关系,并考察了动态环境特征(技术波动、竞争强度)的二次调节作用。在不同的竞合关系中,由于合作和竞争的强度不同,契约治理与关系治理机制的作用也存在差异,同时,治理机制与创新绩效之间的关系也受到两种不同环境动态性特征的影响。研究结果显示,在纵向竞合中,运用关系治理比运用契约治理能更好地提升创新绩效,技术波动正向调节契约治理、关系治理与创新绩效间的关系。在横向竞合中,运用契约治理比运用关系治理有效,竞争强度加强了契约治理对创新绩效的影响,即关系治理在波动的环境中更有效,契约治理在竞争的环境中更有效。本文为企业开展研发联盟组合管理提供了新的视角和管理对策。     

Culture and cross-functional coopetition: The interplay of organizational and national culture

Scholars now recognize coopetition—the joint occurrence of cooperation and competition—between functional units as an important factor for a firm's learning and performance. We know little, however, about the drivers of cross-functional coopetition and in particular the roles of organizational culture and national culture. This study introduces cross-functional coopetition to the international management literature by illuminating the cultural antecedents of cross-functional coopetition. Specifically, we develop a cross-cultural model to analyze the influence of organizational and national culture on cross-functional coopetition. Drawing on a dataset of 646 companies from seven countries, we theoretically advance and empirically validate the influence of organizational culture and the moderating role of individualism and uncertainty avoidance on cross-functional coopetition. Organizational cultural dimensions directly enhance cross-functional coopetition. Furthermore, strong social values of individualism and uncertainty avoidance weaken the relationship between organizational culture and cross-functional coopetition. This study provides a novel perspective on how organizational culture can represent a strategic resource by illuminating the cultural mechanisms that influence coopetition within the firm.     

The Coexistence of Competition and Cooperation between Networks: Implications from Two Taiwanese Healthcare Networks*

The issue of coopetition, the coexistence of cooperation and competition, has recently come to the fore in the strategic management field. Previous coopetition research has focused on the intra‐organizational level, inter‐organizational level and triad level, but less attention has been paid to coopetition at the network level. The purpose of this paper is to address the coexistence of competition and cooperation between networks, and to depict how networks with different structures interact with each other. Drawing from a detailed case study of two healthcare networks in Taiwan, we demonstrate how they first initiated competition, followed by cooperation and then coopetition. From our analysis of this example of network coopetition, we develop three propositions that address the forces driving competition and cooperation and the different structures that allow competition and cooperation to coexist. We found that two organizations will compete and cooperate simultaneously when each organization has complementary but distinctly different sets of resources and when the field of competition is distinctly separate from the field of cooperation. In addition, two networks will find it easier to balance competition and cooperation when each network has compatible but distinctly different structures. We argue that the simultaneous existence of cooperation and competition is not dependent on closeness to the customer, as previously suggested in the literature, but on the balance between the forces for cooperation and for competition. We suggest from this research that networks can maintain the balance between competition and cooperation when they act using different structures. Finally, we discuss the implications of the value of competition and then coopetition at multiple levels of analysis and the implications for future research from a practical perspective.     

Organizational innovativeness and coopetition: a study of video game developers

Collaboration with rivals is viewed as a way to achieve superior performance of firms in terms of innovation output. Yet empirical results show that coopetition may either foster, hamper or be neutral to innovation. The motivation of our study resides in firms’ heterogeneity in terms of their innovative capacity, that is innovativeness, in order to better understand the complex relationship between coopetition and innovation. We explore the interdependency between organizational innovativeness and coopetition. Our study has been conducted in the Polish video game industry. The data has been collected through a survey administered to all 506 identified Polish video game developers, with an effective sample of 84 coopetitors. We run correlation and regression analyses in a multidimensional approach to organizational innovativeness and coopetition. Our findings show that coopetition is a popular strategy for video game developers, and is adopted by 68% of firms. Organizational innovativeness and its particular dimensions are positively and significantly related to both direct and indirect coopetition. Based on factor analysis we find its three components to be reliable: openness and encouragement to innovate; strategic innovative focus; and extrinsic monetary motivation. While extrinsic monetary motivation does not play a role in coopetition of video game developers, openness and encouragement to innovate stimulates especially indirect coopetition, while strategic innovative focus affects especially direct coopetition.     

Coopetition Strategy – When is it Successful? Empirical Evidence on Innovation and Market Performance

Coopetition (collaboration between competing firms) has been viewed as a potentially beneficial but also a risky relationship for a firm. Earlier literature provides inconclusive evidence in terms of the effects of a firm's coopetition strategy on innovation and market performance, suggesting both positive and negative implications. Some of this variation could be attributed to the fact that coopetition is successful only in certain types of business environment. In order to take the research further, this study examines the effect of a coopetition strategy on the firm's innovation and market performance, focusing on the moderating effects of market uncertainty, network externalities and competitive intensity. The results from a cross‐industry survey of 209 Finnish firms provide novel evidence on the conditions under which coopetition is successful and when it is not.     

面向顾客模糊性要求的服务交互价值共创研究

服务接触中顾客所提出的模糊性要求,为服务交互管理带来诸多挑战。动态刻画面向模糊性要求的服务交互价值共创过程为理解和应对模糊性要求提供了具体的视角。本研究通过构建服务交互价值共创模型,模拟面向模糊性要求情景的单人单次和单人多次服务交互的价值共创过程。结果表明,三个核心判断条件识别出价值共创的四种典型情形;多次交互情境下,员工自由应对时平均能力提升方向不定,员工间个体能力差异也较大,而企业对员工的干预能有效提升员工能力和服务质量。该研究首次动态阐释了非常规波动下顾企价值共创的具体过程,也明确了企业对员工应对模糊性要求干预的必要性和有效性。     

Do trust and distrust in coopetition matter to performance?

It is widely acknowledged that firms intensely engage in coopetition (i.e., simultaneous cooperation and competition) and obtain unique benefits from such relationships. However, limited knowledge exists about how and when coopetition intensity leads to superior performance. Building on the theoretical work documenting that both trust and distrust are critical for enhancing performance in interfirm relationships, we address the aforementioned gap by looking into the distinct yet beneficial roles of trust and distrust in coopetition. More specifically, we argue that whereas trust likely serves as an intervening mechanism through which coopetition intensity enhances relationship performance, distrust positively influences the association between coopetition intensity and relationship performance. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 225 Swedish firms engaged in coopetition, and provide empirical evidence that trust and distrust play distinct yet important roles in achieving superior performance from coopetition.     

How emerging digital technologies affect operations management through co-creation. Empirical evidence from the maritime industry

Abstract

Globalization, variation in customer expectations, and the developments connected to Information & Communication Technology are usually considered as the main drivers of changes in Operations Management (OM) strategies by firms in both manufacturing and service industries. Emerging digital technologies, such as Internet of Things or Cloud Computing, represents a novel paradigm that is rapidly affecting on several aspects of everyday-life of private and business users. This paper contributes to extant literature about the relationship between emerging digital technologies and OM, by stressing the value co-creation issue. Specifically, we investigate how emerging digital technologies affect OM through value co-creation in the maritime industry. Our study reports the case of FairWind project, an open technology marine service and graphic user interface enabling sailors to personalize their experience on board through 3rd party boat applications. The case of Fair Wind points out how emerging digital technologies contribute to OM within both organizations and, more in general, maritime industry, as well as the critical role of user’s co-creation in defining and managing on-board operations.     

Coopetition in New Product Development Alliances: Advantages and Tensions for Incremental and Radical Innovation

Coopetition (collaboration between competitors) can facilitate product innovation, but there is still debate about how it is suited to radical or incremental innovation. This paper argues that the early and later phases of coopetitive new product development (NPD) pose different benefits and risks for the innovation types. Building on the tensions approach to value creation and appropriation, we develop a series of hypotheses on the role of coopetition in NPD alliances and focal firm's innovation output. The hypotheses are tested on a quantitative data set of 1049 NPD alliances in the German medical and machinery sectors. The results show that, while coopetition is advantageous for incremental innovation in both pre‐launch and launch phases, radical innovation benefits from coopetition in the launch phase only.     

Interfirm coopetition,trust, and opportunism: a mediated moderation model

Based on the literature on coopetition, interorganizational trust perspective, and recent work studying their interactions, we propose a mediated moderation model, which delineates how coopetition moderates the relationship between collaborations and opportunism and whether interorganizational trust mediates the moderated relationship. The findings indicate that the interaction of collaborations and coopetition positively influences opportunism, and that this effect will be negatively mediated by interorganizational trust. The results highlight that simultaneous use of the coopetition strategy will impact the efforts on opportunism reduction and illustrate the importance of interorganizational trust in the coopetitive situation.

     

Is Cooperation with Competitors a Good Idea? An Example in Practice

Coopetition has become a heated issue in the last decade. In this study, a scrutinized review of previous research on coopetition is presented to clarify the research stream on coopetition, from which the implications are derived and a framework to analyse the phenomenon is proposed. Given the complex nature of coopetition, an in‐depth case study was undertaken to investigate the competition–cooperation relationship and coopetition performance over a 15‐year period in a Taiwanese supermarket network, which was formed by a focal company and its competitors. Performance was analysed before and after launching the coopetition strategy, in which 31 indicators were examined. The findings imply that competition (Yang) and cooperation (Yin) are reciprocally rooted in and mutually promoted by each other. The findings also confirmed that cooperation with competitors did lead to better performance, at least over a period, in two ways. The first was that the adoption of coopetition permitted the attainment of performance levels beyond what would otherwise have been possible; the second was that the adoption of coopetition changed the timeframe, permitting earlier achievement of higher performance levels. This study contributes to and extends knowledge of the dynamics and consequences of cooperation with competitors and demonstrates that coopetition has a significant temporary advantage.     

Strategy frames in coopetition: An examination of coopetition entry factors in high-tech firms

Collaboration with competitors offers unique advantages such as increasing market, innovation, and financial performance. However, the degree of coopetition adoption varies between firms, as does the ability to achieve intended outcomes. We address this variety through the lens of strategic frames, essential for understanding business environment interpretations that managers develop, interactions with other actors that they engage in, and the subsequent performance firms may achieve. We examine associations between external and internal coopetition factors as perceived by coopeting managers.To single out the coopetition factors seen by respondents as the most relevant and to evaluate their mutual associations, we apply traditional regression analyses on survey data collected from 352 high-technology firms in Poland. To fully embrace the causal complexity, we advance our regression-based insights by using a complementary necessary condition analysis (NCA) and bottleneck analysis.Our results suggest that coopeting managers place higher importance on customer-driven rather than on resource-driven coopetition factors when considered as sufficient leveraging factors. Still, the complementary NCA reveals internal resources as critical factors for the perception of external factors of coopetition. Finally, we identify external technological development as the most limiting bottleneck for the perception of most internal coopetition factors, highlighting coopetition as a technology-driven strategy.     

A coopetition perspective of MNC–host government relations

Building on convergent insights of resource dependence and business political behavior, this article attempts to develop a conceptual and typological framework of coopetition in which cooperation and competition simultaneously coexist in the relationship between multinational corporations (MNCs) and host governments. The coopetition view does not see the MNC–government relationship (MGR) as dichotomous or as a continuum between cooperation and competition but as a simultaneous, inclusive partnership containing cooperation and competition as two separate yet interrelated continua. This article addresses why coopetition arises, what coopetition constitutes, and how coopetition configures with environmental and organizational dynamics. It offers a typology of coopetition that identifies MNCs involving varying cooperation and competition (estranger, contender, partner, and integrator) and elucidates each identity's political responses.     

How can value co-creation be integrated into a customer experience evaluation?

With the arrival of the service economy, businesses across different sectors have to rely increasingly on service design, with its focus on the viewpoints of customers and their experiences. Existing frameworks for evaluating customer experience tend to neglect the connection between customer experience and value co-creation, which is critical for enhancing the performance of service design. The aim of this conceptual paper is, therefore, to develop a customer experience evaluation framework that is coherently integrated with the value co-creation construct. It is achieved by intersecting the most relevant insights from prior approaches to evaluating customer experiences with a theoretical interpretation of service value as value in the experience that is always co-created and uniquely determined by the customer's personal lived and imagined experiences. The proposed framework is original in its theorizing of the evaluation process as a transformation from a customer experience evaluation to a synchronized evaluation of value in the experience and value co-creation throughout and beyond the service process. The framework proposes to utilize it in both major service redesign and on-the-spot service improvements, which are extremely relevant to businesses operating in highly competitive environments. The proposed framework is designed to guide future empirical evaluations, accommodate new theoretical extensions, and inform practical applications to design service offerings as unique and preferred experiences for customers.     

Social media led co-creation of knowledge in developing societies: SME’s roles in the adoption,use and appropriation of smartphones in South Asia

Abstract

Social media supports the creative economy through its involvement in the adoption and appropriation of new innovation and accelerates economic growth. The current paper expands on this notion by identifying and analyzing the interaction between social media-based communities and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), as it examines how social media contributes to the knowledge co-creation and supports the adoption, use and appropriation of smartphones in South Asian countries, which are inhabited by approximately 1.6 billion people. The findings obtained through virtual ethnography (VE) provide insights into the dynamics and kinetics of knowledge co-creation and how that benefits large multinationals, small local businesses and consumers in developing societies. As such, we advance the knowledge management scholarship by presenting a holistic model of co-creation of knowledge involving multiple stakeholders.     

基于双层网络的第三方支付机构与商业银行竞合演化机理研究

本文以中国第三方支付机构和商业银行为研究对象,借鉴演化博弈论思想和双层网络演化博弈仿真方法,剖析两类企业竞合互动的演化规律以及相关因素对演化稳定策略的影响。研究发现,第三方支付机构与商业银行竞合的演化稳定策略存在不确定性,合作收益的提升、合作成本的降低、违约惩罚的提高以及利益分配的合理性有助于提高两类企业的合作水平,推动两群体向合作主导演化。细化研究发现,两类企业体现出显著的异质性,第三方支付机构对相关因素的变化更为敏感,对利益的要求更低。同时各群体内部收益差距明显,实力较强的大型第三方支付机构和商业银行能够获得较高的合作收益和较多的合作机会,而中小第三方支付机构和商业银行难以从竞合中获得理想收益。     

顾客价值共创模式下的零售商定价与服务策略研究

顾客参与价值共创模式逐渐成为商家吸引消费者的重要利器,在该模式下消费者需要投入一定的成本为产品或服务的最终形成创造一定的价值。本文构建了顾客参与产品价值共创背景下的理论分析模型,通过刻画顾客参与偏好、顾客参与复杂度、价值共创效应和麻烦效应等关键变量,研究了零售商的定价和服务策略。研究表明,当麻烦效应充分小且价值共创效应足够大时,零售商引入顾客参与价值共创战略能达到零售商和消费者双赢局面;大多数情况下提供上门安装服务是零售商的占优策略;零售商提供服务后能够借助服务定价更有效地区分消费者从而更有效地实施价格歧视,使得消费者受损;大多数情况下零售商服务成本的增加反而对消费者有利。     

Neither complements nor substitutes: Examining the case for coalignment of contract-based and relation-based alliance governance mechanisms in coopetition contexts

Although the extant literature recognizes that the contract-based and relation-based alliance governance mechanisms (AGMs) play a significant role in the success of alliances, the nature of their interplay still remains ambiguous. In this study, we move away from the traditional debate between contract- and relation-based AGMs as substitutes versus complements. Instead, we offer the notion of “fit” or the “coalignment” as a more appropriate frame to explain the interplay between contract- and relation-based AGMs in the coopetition context. We conceptualize ‘Coalignment of Alliance Governance Mechanisms’ (CAGM) as a distinct higher-order construct and outline a methodological orientation to estimate the coalignment of the two forms of AGMs. We conduct a longitudinal study using primary data from 320 matched coopetition alliances in high-technology research-intensive sectors in India and find that the CAGM explains better the impact of governance mechanisms on value creation in coopetition alliances.