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Research streams on competition and cooperation are central to the field of strategic management but have evolved independently. The emerging literature on coopetition has brought attention to the phenomenon of simultaneous competition and cooperation, yet the interplay between the two has remained under-researched. We offer a roadmap for studying this interplay, which identifies some of its antecedents and consequences, highlights debates concerning the nature of competition and cooperation and the association between the two, and directs attention to the tension between competition and cooperation and the alternative approaches for managing this tension. We discuss the broader implications of the interplay, note some intriguing open questions, offer directions for future research, and present an organizing framework for the interplay of competition and cooperation.

Research on learning in alliances explains how firms simultaneously seek to absorb their partners’ knowledge while protecting their own knowledge from involuntarily leaking to their partners. We co...

Ecosystems are groups of independent firms linked through non-generic complementarities that work together to create a customer value proposition. Given the tentative consensus on the definition of...

Prior research has considered various conceptualizations of internationalization and offered diverse perspectives on its performance implications that, in turn, have generated mixed empirical findings. We advance research on the performance implications of internationalization by uncovering the multifaceted nature of internationalization and developing a generalizable theoretical framework that unbundles internationalization into three main facets: international intensity, international diversity, and international distance. We draw from multiple disciplines to explain the causal mechanisms that underlie the distinctive performance implications of each facet and test our predictions using panel data on Japanese firms. Our findings demonstrate that international intensity and international distance produce sigmoid effects on firm performance, though for different theoretical reasons. In turn, international diversity generates a U-shaped performance effect. Our multidisciplinary perspective contributes to international business research by discerning the distinct facets of internationalization and analyzing the mechanisms that disentangle the complex nature of the internationalization–performance relationship.

How does the appointment of an outside CEO affect the hiring firm’s performance? Prior research reports inferior performance for outsiders, but with high variance that yields mixed findings. We dev...

Supplemental material, Online_Appendices-al for Revisiting James March (1991): Whither exploration and exploitation? by Ralf Wilden, Jan Hohberger, Timothy M Devinney, Dovev Lavie in Strategic Organization

Recent research on corporate misconduct has revealed that a firm’s misconduct can generate negative consequences to blameless firms in its industry. In turn, research on competitive dynamics sugges...

Scholars have studied the antecedents of exploration and exploitation, mostly identifying environmental and organizational conditions that facilitate exploration. We advance research on the manager...

The goal of this symposium is to review some important theoretical perspectives associated with interfirm collaborations (or interfirm ties) to better understand how some of these theories can be b...

Prior research on ambidexterity has limited its concern to balancing exploration and exploitation via particular modes of operation. Acknowledging the interplay of tendencies to explore versus exploit via the internal organization, alliance, and acquisition modes, we claim that balancing these tendencies within each mode undermines firm performance because of conflicting routines, negative transfer, and limited specialization. Nevertheless, by exploring in one mode and exploiting in another, i.e., balancing across modes, a firm can avoid some of these impediments. Thus, we advance ambidexterity research by asserting that balance across modes enhances performance more than balance within modes. Our analysis of 190 U.S.-based software firms further reveals that exploring via externally oriented modes such as acquisitions or alliances, while exploiting via internal organization, enhances these firms' performance.

We study how intra-industry product diversity affects firm performance by analyzing the implications of expanding a firm's product line within its core business. We conjecture that increases in product diversity initially undermine performance because of negative transfer effects but then improve it due to economies of scope. We further theorize that this U-shaped effect of product diversity becomes more pronounced as the firm increases the intensity of its technology investment, yet is likely to be attenuated by the firm's accumulated experience with intra-industry diversification. Data on 156 U.S.-based software firms operating from 1990 to 2001 furnish support for these conjectures. Our study advances emerging research on intra-industry diversification by underscoring some of its contingent performance effects. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The resource-based view (RBV) is a useful framework for studying strategic organization. However, it focuses on rent-generating properties of resources, with less attention paid to the processes by which firms accumulate and deploy resources. I contend that organizational design that supports these processes should be integral to RBV theorizing. Despite recent debates concerning the RBV (Barney, 2001; Lado et al., 2006; Priem and Butler, 2001), its conceptualization of the firm as a bundle of resources has remained immune to criticism. This conceptualization has led scholars to consider everything that is embedded in the firm as a resource: ‘all assets, capabilities, organizational processes, firm attributes, information, knowledge, etc.’ (Barney, 1991: 101). Thus, it has obscured the distinction between resources and other organizational properties that govern resource accumulation and deployment. Related research streams shed little light on these processes. The knowledge-based view underscores some properties of knowledge (Kogut and Zander, 1992). Although several scholars distinguish flows from stocks of knowledge (e.g., Decarolis and Deeds, 1999), this literature disregards organizational constraints that limit knowledge accumulation and deployment. In turn, the absorptive capacity literature studies internalization of external knowledge, referring to the cycle of acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation (Zahra and George, 2002). It concentrates on abilities rather than on supportive mechanisms. The capabilities literature examines a firm’s abilities to achieve objectives by integrating, combining, and leveraging resources (Hoopes and Madsen, 2008). It sheds more light on the means by which firms acquire and release resources, yet falls short of revealing how firms manage their resource bases. Finally, the dynamic capabilities literature concerns the ability to reconfigure capabilities in view of path dependencies and changing market conditions (Teece et al., 1997). Capabilities can follow predetermined lifecycles (Helfat and Peteraf, 2003) or be transformed and substituted (Lavie, 2006), yet the mechanisms that support their reconfiguration have not been specified. These streams of research contribute little to the understanding of dynamic resource accumulation and deployment. Most approaches do not distinguish resource flows from stocks; some consider only one type of resource, while others underscore either internal or external resources. They neither distinguish resources from capabilities and other organizational properties nor do they explain their interplay. They associate competitive advantage with the properties of resources and 452822 SOQ10310.1177/1476127012452822LavieStrategic Organization 2012

In studying the antecedents of alliance performance, one stream of research has underscored the alignment between partners' characteristics whereas another has concentrated on relational mechanisms such as mutual trust, relational embeddedness, and relational commitment. We integrate these two perspectives by examining how congruence of the partners' cultures and organizational routines facilitates the emergence of relational mechanisms in non-equity alliances. Our analysis of 420 non-equity alliances in the information technology industry demonstrates how differences in partners' internal task routines undermine relational mechanisms that in turn impact alliance performance. Partners who acknowledge their latent differences can overcome some of these negative consequences. We advance alliance research by studying the performance implications of alliance partners' organizational differences and by demonstrating how these effects are mediated by relational mechanisms. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

How do alliance portfolios evolve? We develop grounded theory based on Unisys' case, which reveals how exogenous technological changes at the industry level and shifts in a firm's strategy shape the composition of partners and the nature of alliance relationships. We identify four evolutionary processes: responding to external stimuli, breaking off inertial pressures, enabling coevolution, and restructuring and realigning the alliance portfolio. We shift attention from alliance formation decisions to changes in the nature of alliances and partner characteristics throughout the duration of the alliance portfolio. We suggest that the evolution of alliance portfolios cannot be fully explained by path dependence, life-cycle patterns, or proactive design. Instead, alliance portfolios are shaped by environmental stimuli and conflicting organizational processes. Copyright 2012 The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

Organizational research advocates that firms balance exploration and exploitation, yet it acknowledges inherent challenges in reconciling these opposing activities. To overcome these challenges, such research suggests that firms establish organizational separation between exploring and exploiting units or engage in temporal separation whereby they oscillate between exploration and exploitation over time. Nevertheless, these approaches entail resource allocation trade-offs and conflicting organizational routines, which may undermine organizational performance as firms seek to balance exploration and exploitation within a discrete field of organizational activity (i.e., domain). We posit that firms can overcome such impediments and enhance their performance if they explore in one domain while exploiting in another. Studying the alliance portfolios of software firms, we demonstrate that firms do not typically benefit from balancing exploration and exploitation within the function domain (technology versus marketing and production alliances) and structure domain (new versus prior partners). Nevertheless, firms that balance exploration and exploitation across these domains by engaging in research and development alliances while collaborating with their prior partners, or alternatively, by forming marketing and production alliances while seeking new partners, gain in profits and market value. Moreover, we reveal that increases in firm size that exacerbate resource allocation trade-offs and routine rigidity reinforce the benefits of balance across domains and the costs of balance within domains. Our domain separation approach offers new insights into how firms can benefit from balancing exploration and exploitation. What matters is not simply whether firms balance exploration and exploitation in their alliance formation decisions but the means by which they achieve such balance.

Acknowledging interdependence in firms’ tendencies to explore versus exploit across governance modes, we claim that balancing these tendencies within each mode undermines performance as a result of...

A growing body of research suggests that an organization's ties to other organizations furnish resources that bestow various benefits. Scholars have proposed different perspectives on how such networks of ties shape organizational behavior and performance outcomes, but they have paid little attention to the underlying mechanisms driving these effects. We propose reach, richness, and receptivity as three fundamental mechanisms that jointly constitute a parsimonious model for explaining how network resources contribute to organizational performance. Reach is the extent to which an organization's network connects it to diverse and distant partners. Richness represents the potential value of the resources available to the organization through its ties to partners. Receptivity denotes the extent to which the organization can access and channel network resources across interorganizational boundaries. Whereas reach specifies how wide-ranging and heterogeneous the organization's network connections are, richness characterizes the value of the combinations of resources furnished by its partners. Receptivity in turn portrays how organizational capabilities and the quality of ties to partners facilitate flows of network resources. We propose that the interplay of these three mechanisms determines the benefits that the organization obtains from its network: reach and richness jointly determine the potential value of the network, while receptivity is crucial in realizing that potential.

We extend international strategy research by unbundling distinctive facets of internationalization and explaining the unique causal mechanisms and contingencies underlying their respective performa...

The purpose of this symposium is to bring together scholars that work on new and highly promising areas in competition and rivalry to share their insights how competition research can be advanced through these new avenues. The five emerging areas that we plan to cover are governance, psychology, social networks, international, and communication.

Corporate venture capital (CVC) investments serve as interfirm relationships that enable established firms to tap into emerging technology markets. Nevertheless, firms may also leverage their strategic alliances to this end. Does alliance formation reinforce or attenuate a firm's tendency to invest in entrepreneurial ventures? We introduce a resource-based perspective whereby resource complementarity and network resource visibility prompt a reinforcing association between CVC investment and alliance formation. In turn, external resource redundancy and internal resource allocation constraints yield an attenuating effect of alliance formation on CVC investment. Analyzing the alliances and CVC investments of 372 software firms during the 1990s, we reconcile these opposing arguments by revealing an inverted U-shaped association between CVC investment and alliance formation. Accordingly, the number of CVC investments first increases, but then decreases, with the number of alliances formed. Moreover, the positive association between CVC investment and alliance formation diminishes as firms invest in their internal resource stocks, mature, and accumulate experience with prior CVC investments. We advance strategic entrepreneurship research by elucidating the tendency of established firms to engage in CVC investment and by unpacking the complex association between different types of interfirm relationships that these firms leverage. Copyright © 2010 Strategic Management Society.

We examine the conditions under which the prior partnering experience of firms contributes to value creation in their new alliances. We propose that prior experience with the same partners, that is, ‘partner-specific experience,’ provides greater benefits than ‘general partnering experience’ that encompasses all prior alliances with any partner. We further explore some of the boundary conditions for the effects of partner-specific experience. We suggest that the effect of partner-specific experience on value creation in alliances is moderated by the extent to which the assets of the new partner differ from those of the firm's prior partners. We also propose that the firm's own technological and financial resources increase the benefits of partner-specific experience. Finally, we predict that the value of partner-specific experience will increase under high levels of firm-specific uncertainty. We test these hypotheses with comprehensive longitudinal multi-industry data on joint ventures formed among Fortune 300 firms between 1987 and 1996. Based on stock market returns to joint venture announcements, the results provide support for the contingent value of partnering experience. The implications for managing alliances and advancing organizational learning are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Alliance research has traditionally focused on structural and relational aspects of the networks in which firms are situated, paying less attention to the inherent characteristics of their partners. This study introduces the notion of alliance portfolio internationalization (API), which refers to the degree of foreignness of partners in a firm's collection of immediate alliance relationships. We develop a framework to explain how API impacts firm performance. We suggest that as a firm's API increases, financial performance is expected to initially decline, then improve, and finally decline again. This sigmoid relationship between API and financial performance is ascribed to evolving learning effects that shape the net benefits of API. When the firm's alliance portfolio, on average, consists of proximate foreign partners, the firm may fail to recognize latent national differences, but at moderate levels of API, its absorptive capacity and specialized collaborative routines support the exchange of valuable network resources. Nevertheless, high levels of API undermine firm performance because of the failure of collaborative routines and mounting liabilities of cross-national differences. We test the framework using data on the alliance portfolios of U.S.-based software firms from 1990 to 2001. The results provide support for the sigmoid relationship as well as for our predictions that firms, which have gained experience with foreign partners and maintained wholly owned subsidiaries in their partners' countries of origin, can overcome some of the liabilities of API and better leverage its benefits.

This study uncovers value creation and appropriation mechanisms in alliance portfolios. It reveals how the value created by network resources varies with their complementarity. The relative bargain...

This study reveals the multifaceted contribution of alliance portfolios to firms' market performance. Extending prior research that has stressed the value-creation effect of network resources, it uncovers how prominent partners may undermine a firm's capacity to appropriate value from its alliance portfolio. Analysis of a comprehensive panel dataset of 367 software firms and their 20,779 alliances suggests that the contribution of network resources to value creation varies with the complementarity of those resources. Furthermore, the relative bargaining power of partners in the alliance portfolio constrains the firm's appropriation capacity, especially when many of these partners compete in the focal firm's industry. In turn, the firm's market performance improves with the intensity of competition among partners in its alliance portfolio. These findings advance network research by highlighting the trade-offs that alliance portfolios impose on firms that seek to manage and leverage their alliances. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Do firms balance exploration and exploitation in their alliance formation decisions and, if so, why and how? We argue that absorptive capacity and organizational inertia impose conflicting pressure...

I present a model of capability reconfiguration, integrating the Schumpeterian perspective on technological discontinuities with the dynamic capabilities literature to explain the responses of incumbents to technological change. I identify substitution, evolution, and transformation as three mechanisms of capability reconfiguration and then link the choice of reconfiguration mechanism to the nature of technological change and to the attributes of capabilities. I conclude that the extent to which the chosen mechanism enables incumbents to overcome cognitive and operational impediments influences their capacity to bridge capability gaps.

The article studies corporate evolution by performing a longitudinal analysis of Unisys Corporation and its alliance network, using interviews, questionnaires and archival data sources to identify ...

We have extended the theory of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) by focusing on MNCs' strategic positioning in a foreign market relative to their local counterparts. We propose a new typological framework that focuses on the competitive and marketing strategies of both foreign and local counter firms. Israel's growing attractiveness to foreign MNCs during the mid-1990s has been chosen to explore our propositions. A sample of 406 respondents evaluated the strategic positioning and performance of 104 firms, 56 of which were foreign MNCs and 48 of which were their local counterparts. Our findings suggest that foreign MNCs operating in Israel were perceived as superior to their local counterparts, in terms of their competitive strategy, marketing strategy, and customer satisfaction. In addition, MNCs were identified as “adaptive” organizations relative to local competitors, which were perceived to hold “myopic” strategic positions. Thus, foreign MNCs have been able to capture relatively high positions, in terms of perceived value for money.

In light of the increasing popularity of strategic alliances, the resource-based view is revisited and extended in order to allow for the consideration of alliance partner resources in evaluating the competitive advantage of interconnected firms. The proposed model distinguishes shared resources from non-shared resources and identifies four types of rents: (a) internal rents, (b) appropriated relational rents, (c) inbound spillover rents and (d) outbound spillover rents. The model illustrates how firm-specific, relation-specific, and partner-specific factors determine the contribution of partner resources to the rent streams that a firm can extract from its ego-network of alliances.

This study examines the association between multimarket competition and the formation of horizontal alliances. Prior research has suggested that multimarket competition attenuates competitive press...

With the promise of regional peace brought about by political developments in the Middle East in the 1990s, Israeli firms found themselves in a radically changing environment, with multinational corporations (MNCs) making massive inroads into their long-standing domestic monopolies. Firstly, this article demonstrates how foreign MNC positioning has dominated that of their domestic counterparts. Secondly, we describe how this strategic dominance has triggered domestic firms into rethinking their strategies, and turned them into global players. The Israeli experience offers lessons for both foreign and domestic firms in how to develop economies better prepared for a win–win situation.

The article develops a five-step framework for dealing with the strategic issues of multinationals' entry into foreign markets. First, it assists multinationals in identifying their superior strategic capabilities. Second, it focuses on forming a basis for competitive advantage. Third, it focuses on identifying multinationals' relative marketing positioning. Fourth, it describes the mechanisms by which competitive advantage can be gained via the marketing mix. Finally, the framework suggests continuous reassessment of multinationals' competitive positioning in foreign markets. The major argument is that multinationals should concentrate not only on the entry decision but also on adapting the proper strategy for winning the game. This can be done by simultaneously developing strategic capabilities, being responsive to stakeholders and customers' needs and anticipating the moves of competitors. The article bases its conclusions on the latest theories of strategic management such as the Strategic Reference Points Theory (SRP) and uses the ascending experience of the invaded Israeli market during the mid-1990s.

In recent years, alliances have become even more popular than mergers and acquisitions. Alliance formation has led to the emergence of interconnected firms, which are embedded in alliance networks. This paper offers a theory of network resources to evaluate the competitive advantage of interconnected firms. It distinguishes shared resources from non-shared resources, identifies various types of rent, and illustrates how firm-, relation-, and partner-specific factors determine the contribution of network resources to the rents that interconnected firms extract from their alliance networks. This paper revisits traditional assumptions of the resource-based view and suggests that the nature of relationships may matter more than the nature of resources in creating and sustaining the competitive advantage of interconnected firms.

This study introduces a behavioral theory of capability development. It suggests that a firm’s efforts to develop its explorative and exploitative capabilities are driven by performance feedback, and subsequently enhance performance. This full feedback loop is tested with a sample of U.S. firms in the electronics industry during 1993-2001. The findings reveal reduced investment in exploitative capability when performance exceeds aspirations, yet investment in explorative capability increases following such performance gap. In addition, environmental munificence and uncertainty attenuate these effects. The firm’s exploitative capability enhances performance in the short term, while its explorative capability undermines it in the short-term but improves it in subsequent periods. Finally, availability of resources and business relatedness enhance these performance effects. Accordingly, this study integrates theories on learning from performance feedback with the resource-based view while informing research o...

Alliance research underscores the contribution of partnering experience to value creation in alliances. We distinguish partner-specific experience gained in recurrent alliances with the same partne...

Social network theories have gained prominence in the strategic management literature. Nevertheless, attempts to extend their application to the domain of competition should be questioned given the...

Prior research has offered mixed views on the implications of knowledge maturity for the value of innovation. We seek to reconcile these views by claiming that the effect of knowledge maturity is contingent on the origin of knowledge and the extent of its diffusion in the industry. We predict an inverted U-shaped effect of knowledge maturity on the value of new innovations. Moreover, when inventors incorporate geographically distant knowledge in their innovations, we expect the value of knowledge maturity to be enhanced. In turn, incorporating technologically distant knowledge or waiting for knowledge to become diffused in the industry is likely to mitigate the value of knowledge maturity. Analysis of the citation patterns associated with 5,575 biotechnology patents of firms operating in the United States between 1985 and 2002 offers support for our conjectures. By underscoring the contingent value of knowledge maturity, our study advances innovation research and contributes to the learning literature.