Perspectives on Coopetition on Actor and Operational Levels

The reality of today’s business world is based both on cooperation and competition, or coopetition. There is, however, a lot of diversity within the field of coopetition research, and the research within this field is moreover only at an emerging stage. The purpose of this study is to explore the nature of coopetition by recognizing actor and operational levels of coopetition. The nature of the paper is conceptual. The findings of the paper show that most of the previous research about coopetition has been on an interfirm level – that is, related to cooperation between companies. Further, it is possible to argue that the studies have mostly focused on cooperation between competitors. In the majority of the existing studies, coopetition is treated as a strategy, and not as something natural. The theoretical contribution of this paper is that it gives scholars within the area of coopetition a broad theoretical background, which is useful for future research. From a managerial perspective, the findings demonstrate the multifaceted nature of coopetition.