 The causes of conflict when small- and medium-sized competitors cooperateAnnika Tidstrom International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2009, vol. 8, issue 1, 74-91 Abstract: Traditionally, the business network approach focuses on the cooperative aspects of business relationships. Competition is deliberately left aside. It is, however, a fact that business relationships often consist of both cooperation and competition, which also can be termed 'coopetition'. Especially, the Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) need to cooperate with other companies in order to develop, survive or get access to resources. One type of business relationship that seems to be especially interesting, considering coopetition, is intercompetitor cooperation. Conflicts are natural when competitors cooperate. The aim of this paper is to increase our understanding of the causes of conflict when small- and medium-sized competitors cooperate. The empirical part of this paper is based on two case studies within two different industries in Finland. The findings of the study show that the causes of conflicts in intercompetitor cooperation can be organisational, relational or externally related. Keywords: small and medium-sized enterprises; SMEs; conflicts; intercompetitor cooperation; coopetition; case studies; Finland; competition. (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijesbu:v:8:y:2009:i:1:p:74-91 Access Statistics for this article More articles in International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd |
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