Relationship Governance And Performance For Different Structure Of Coopetition In The Value Net

The organization today is embedded in its value-net consisting ofcompetitors, suppliers, channel members or customers and stakeholders etc.And the organization would form with some of them the coopetitionrelationship-the type of relationship in which the competition andcooperation exist simultaneously, i.e, participants of the relationshipcooperate to create value and in the mean time compete to appropriate thevalue. Coopetition relationship by its nature is a type of inter-firmrelationship, given the competition and cooperation are bound to occursimultaneously.With the world entering into the knowledge economy era, the environmentin which the organization exists is constantly changing and with uncertainty,each organization has its own knowledge structure, none could possesses allthe resources to respond to all the internal and external changes anduncertainties, the organization needs to seek for complimentary resources,capabilities or market power through cooperating with externalorganizations, to work on specific projects and realize its targeted andenhance its competence.In the mean time, the research indicated that many cooperationrelationship, either between competitors or between value chain members,failed after certain period time.The dilemma of “Need to Cooperate but difficult to Cooperate” havemotivated many researchers focusing on the partner selection and inter-firmrelationship governance, aimed at improving the effectiveness of theinter-firm relationship. But still there exist plenty of opportunities to further develop within this domain, for example,(1) Seems the extant studyneglected to some extent the compare between the coopetition betweencompetitors and coopetition between value chain members in their commons anddifferences;(2)the existing study on the cooperation between competitorsis more focused on the side of cooperation pursuing the common benefits of“we come from different background to work together to achieve our commongoals”, but neglected the other side of the coin for each competitor to pursueits individual interest to maximize its individual gain of“I will returnto where I was from after the goals are achieved”, which resulted that theexisting research on coopetition does not reveal profoundly and respond tothe two different type of subjects represented by the two different type ofcoopetition in the value-net, ie,“Cooperation is temporary and thecompetition is permanent”；and“When reaching equilibrium, the cooperationcould last long term”;(3)The extant study on governance of inter-firmrelationship between value chain members is more focused on the contractgovernance and relationship governance, seems in lack of study on governancemechanism between hard end of law enforcement and soft end of relationshipadvocacy.To improve the above mentioned areas, this study focuses on exploring thetwo difference structures of coopetition, formed by the focal organizationwith its value-net members, and their respective governance. The twodifferent structure coopetition are:(1)The horizontal coopetitionrelationship, which is formed between the focal firm and itscompetitors;(2)The vertical coopetition relationship, which is formedbetween the focal firm and its value chain members including the channelmembers and the supply chain members.In summary, there are three research questions in this paper, the first is “what are the major difference between the two difference structures ofcoopetition?”, the second is “based on the identified differences, how toconstruct the measurement on the relationship governance performance, howto select or design the different governance mechanism so to construct thegovernance model to realize the value the firm expects to acquire from therelationship?”, the third is “From the exchange perspective, verticalexchange is similar to intra-firm exchange which has both economic exchangeand social exchange， if we could imitate the governance mechanism ofinstitutionalization used in hierarchical organization to implement it inthe vertical coopetition relationship, to optimize the economic output fromthe vertical coopetiton relationship?”.Based on the comprehensive study of existing literatures, integrating thetheoretical and empirical research on coopetition and on inter-firmrelationship governance, and utilizing the concepts in transaction cost,resources, knowledge, exchange and gaming etc theories, this paper conductsprofound study on the above three questions, through selecting organizationin US, Europe and Asia to collect answers to questionnaires and applying SPSS15and AMOS7to process with the statistical analysis, this paper obtainedthe following conclusions and breakthrough,（1）In comparison of the coopetition between competitors with thecoopetition between value chain membersThrough the study we found there exist the apparent difference betweenthe two types of coopetition in the key factors impacting the relationshipperformance, these factors include the motivation, objectives andinteractive process to create and appropriate the value. For example, in theaspect of motivation to form the relationship, the focal firm forms thecoopetition with competitors because it wants to acquire the resources including the knowledge and specific capability etc, which the firm is inlack of and also difficult to develop within the firm itself. While the focalfirm forms the coopetition with value chain members because of its strategicplanning to develop strategic partners to outsource from which some valuemodules. These research will lay down the foundation for the further studyon the relationship governance with different type of coopetition in the valuenet.(2) In the governance of different structures of coopetiton in thevalue-netThis paper proposes the framework of “Coopetiiton Structure-GovernanceModel-Governance Performance”(S-G-P), and conducted the empirical studybased on500questionnaire s collected from167organizations in US, Europeand Asia Pacific.This paper explores, for the two different structures of coopetition inthe value-net, how to construct the measurement of the relationshipgovernance performance and how to select or construct the governancemechanism so to construct the governance model to realize the objectives ofthe focal firm.We found that the required governance models are apparentlydifferent for different structures of coopetition. For example：(1)For thestrategic objectives, the coopetition with competitors would require the“Knowledge Acquisition” governance mechanism, which positively impactsthe “Satisfaction with the Strategic Objective Realization” of the focalfirm; while the coopetition with value chain members would require the pluralmodel consisting of “Partner Selection” and “Relationship Contract”mechanisms, each of which positively impacts the “Satisfaction with theStrategic Objective Realization” of the focal firm;(2)For the utilityobjectives, the coopetition with competitors would require the plural governance model consisting of mechanisms of “Partner Selection”,“LegalContract” and “Relationship Contract”, while the coopetition with valuechain members would require the plural model consisting of mechanismsof“Partner Selection” and “Relationship Contract”.(3) In the governance of vertical coopetition taking channel relationshipas the exampleFor the coopetition between focal firm and value chain partners, takingcoopetition with channel members as example, this paper studies how the focalfirm, based on the relationship building, constructs theinstitutionalization governance model consisting of elements of writtenrules and unwritten norms, so to optimize the effectiveness of the channel.We found the different governance mechanism adapted by the principal impactsthe agent’s role performance differently, and the impacts are moderated byagent’s “Non-economic satisfaction”. For example, the “Non-coerciveinfluence” by the principal positively impacts “Agent’s roleperformance”, but which effect is negatively moderated by “Agent’snon-economic satisfaction”; the “Channel rules enforcement” by principalnegatively impacts “Agent’s role performance”, but which effect ispositively moderated by ““Agent’s non-economic satisfaction”, and the“The capability selection” by the principal positively impact “Agent’srole performance”.Although the exploratory work for comparing between two structures ofcoopetition and their governance involves numerous aspects and is complicatedto some extent, through analysis, the study focuses on the main steam of“Coopetition Structure->Governance Model->Governance Performance”, andgradually moves to next level down. This main stream representrs sometheoretical breakthrough also is meaningful for management pratice. It contributes to some extent to both the theoretical research on the coopetitionin the value-net and the inter-firm relationship governance, it alsofacilitates the organization in its practice of strategic planning processto form the coopetition relationship and effective governance of therelationship, which provides to some extent the new perspective for theorganization to realize its economic objectives and build up its corecompetence through forming the coopetition relationship and governing iteffectively. Through above work, the study establishes the foundation to someexent for the further study with the subject, and also the authors achievesto control the scope and depth of the paper by focusing on displaying themajor exploratory work. But limited by various factors, there are stillvarious shortfalls in the study and paper, the last section of the paper doesreflection on the shortfalls and gives outlook for the future endeavor.