Tacit coopetition: chimera or reality? Evidence from the Basque Country

ABSTRACT

Coopetition is a strategy by which firms benefit from both collaboration and competition. Collaboration among competitors allows these to obtain advantages such as the joint creation and diffusion of knowledge, the exploration of new market opportunities, the identification of long-term innovation projects related to potential market, product or process diversification, or the gaining of access to external sources while still competing in certain areas. This paper focuses on the concept of tacit coopetition, which is defined as cooperation activities between neighbouring competitors located in the same region. Our goal is to assess the influence of tacit coopetition on the cooperative pattern of firms, as an alternative to promoting innovative projects among competitors. The analysis is performed in the county of Durango, located in the Basque Country (Spain). In particular, we seek evidence of whether tacit coopetition is a reality that can be objectively observed in Durango, and therefore, has the potential for a wider generalization of the phenomenon, or is instead a conceptual rhetoric (i.e. chimera) that is only observable in specific cases. The paper provides three major results. First, it sets out to identify whether tacit coopetition is occurring in Durango. Second, it identifies the factors influencing it, and finally, assesses the impact of tacit coopetition on firm performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Coopetition
• competitiveness
• innovation system
• Basque Country

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their feedback and the comments provided on earlier versions of the paper. The authors are also indebted to all the firms that participated in the survey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Igone Porto‐Gomez http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2865-4818

Jon Mikel Zabala‐Iturriagagoitia http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1975-2555

Notes

1 Due to the limited empirical evidence on the concept of tacit coopetition, we rely on the measures available in the literature in relation to the concept of coopetition.

2 No specific reference has been identified that deals with co-patenting activity and tacit coopetition.

3 These projects were performed between firms involved in the different metal processes that constitute the metal mechanical value chain: casting, stamping, forging and machining. The projects were developed with firms’ own funding between May 2012 and December 2013. For example, one of these projects aimed to develop materials with special characteristics (such as austempered ductile iron), while another aimed to provide hot stamping processes to big companies.

4 TIER 2 and TIER 3 are concepts used in the value chains of the automotive industry. They refer to the stage at which firms are providers of the end customers (end of the value chain). Thus, TIER 3 firms would be those providing TIER 2, and TIER 2 those supplying the final automotive firms (TIER 1).

5 Two vocational training centres are located in the county. The private vocational training centre ‘Durango Maristak’ was created in 1904. In turn, the public vocational training centre of Iurreta was set up in 1987.

6 This association promotes cooperation among county firms seeking innovative projects.

7 The remainder are 22% medium-sized SMEs (more than 50 employees) and 3.7% large firms (more than 250 employees).

8 We acknowledge that cooperation is a matter of degrees rather than an absolute measure, particularly in industry contexts in micro territories. We agree that a ‘yes or no’ type of answer may not be able to effectively capture the willingness, effort and capacity of firms to cooperate with other agents. By opting for a dichotomic variable to assess the level of cooperation of each firm, we aimed to provide a more solid conclusion on the type of agents they actually cooperate with and those with whom firms lack joint activities.

9 Coop_Competitors measures the relationships with competitors, through four questions that qualify the type of cooperation established: (a) I cooperate with my competitors through value chain relationships; (b) I cooperate with my competitors in R&D projects far from the end market; (c) I cooperate with my competitors in R&D projects near to the end market; (d) I cooperate with my competitors to establish market alliances and internationalization tasks. Given these four items had to be assessed on a range of 0–4, the Coop_Competitors sub-index can go from 0 to 16 points.

10 Note that a higher tendency to coopete is observed in the county when competitors are located inside it rather than outside (mean 7.13 – s.d. 1.67).

11 The results are based on 82 answers. The remaining 12 firms in the sample did not share all the data required to address this research question in this section, so were not included in the analysis.

Additional information

Funding

Jon Mikel Zabala-Iturriagagoitia acknowledges financial support from the Basque Government Department of Education, Language Policy and Culture (Reference IT885-16).