Abstract In the past, cooperation in the automotive industry was observed particularly in the vertical dimension of the value chain. Presently, an increasingly strong trend towards cooperation on the horizontal level and thus between direct competitors is emerging. The large number of examples in the automotive supply industry shows that automotive suppliers are trying to combine resources and competencies with direct competitors to gain competitive advantages. In this context coopetition occurs, i.e. the simultaneity of cooperation and competition between at least two companies. One of the main conflicts of coopetition is the emergence of opportunism among the participating parties, which represents one of the greatest threats to successful partnerships in the automotive industry. Conversely, opportunism is required for competition and thereby for the generation of competitive advantages for at least one side of the cooperation. Thus, the consideration of opportunism plays an important role in coopetitive situations, because a distinct (weak) opportunism exerts a positive (negative) influence on competitive behavior, affecting at the same time negatively (positively) on cooperative activities. In the course of coopetition the challenge to ensure a balance of opportunistic behaviors between cooperative and competitive actions becomes crucial. Against this background, the present article analyses the process and the effectiveness of various organizational measures to balance opportunistic behavior in coopetitive situations in the context of the automotive supply industry. In a first step, various organizational measures of the transaction costs, the principal-agent and social exchange theory were extracted. In a second step, ten German automotive suppliers have been examined during coopetitive situations by means of a case study analysis, in order to test the process, the efficiency and the effectiveness of the theoretically derived measures. Our analysis shows that widespread measures in the literature, such as formal contracts or contract-based sanctions, are inefficient and ineffective to balance opportunistic behavior. In contrast, measures which ensure a context of cooperative and competitive activities e.g. social norms and values as well as specific investment and mutual equity investments, are more promising to put opportunism in coopetitive situations into balance.


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    Title :

    Competition, Cooperation, or Both? Designing Coopetitive Structures in the German Automotive Supply Industry


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2015-11-06


    Size :

    18 pages





    Type of media :

    Article/Chapter (Book)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




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