While scholars have analyzed the emergence and characteristics of social enterprises, and their internal tensions between conflicting logics, we have little understanding of the dynamics at the interorganizational level between social enterprises. Based on an in-depth, qualitative study with work integration social enterprises in the secondhand clothes industry, we uncover the dynamics of simultaneous cooperation and competition. Our analysis shows that social enterprises simultaneously—rather than sequentially—engage in coopetitive actions at three levels of action: operational, stakeholder, and environmental interface. At each level, social enterprises engage in different coopetitive actions that do not easily fall under the commercial–social tension usually studied in the social entrepreneurship literature. Social and economic goals motivate both competition and cooperation, but we argue that this plays out differently at each level of coopetition. We conclude with implications for theory and practice.
BattilanaJ.DoradoS. (2010). Building sustainable hybrid organizations: The case of commercial microfinance organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 53(6), 1419–1440.
4.
BattilanaJ.LeeM. (2014). Advancing research on hybrid organizing—Insights from the study of social enterprises. The Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), 397–441.
5.
BattilanaJ.SengulM.PacheA.-C.ModelJ. (2015). Harnessing productive tensions in hybrid organizations: The case of work integration social enterprises. Academy of Management Journal, 58(6), 1658–1685.
6.
BengtssonM.KockS. (2000). “Coopetition” in business networks—To cooperate and compete simultaneously. Industrial Marketing Management, 29(5), 411–426.
7.
BengtssonM.KockS. (2014). Coopetition—Quo vadis? Past accomplishments and future challenges. Industrial Marketing Management, 43, 180–188.
8.
BengtssonM.KockS.Lundgren-HenrikssonE.-L.NäsholmM. H. (2016). Coopetition research in theory and practice: Growing new theoretical, empirical, and methodological domains. Industrial Marketing Management, 57, 4–11.
9.
BosmaN.SchøttT.TerjesenS.KewP. (2016). Global entrepreneurship monitor 2015 to 2016: Special report on social entrepreneurship. http://www.gemconsortium.org/report/49542
10.
BounckenR. B.GastJ.KrausS.BogersM. (2015). Coopetition: A systematic review, synthesis, and future research directions. Review of Managerial Science, 9(3), 577–601.
11.
BrownJ. A.GianiodisP. T.SantoroM. D. (2017). Managing co-opetition for shared stakeholder utility in dynamic environments. California Management Review, 59(4), 114–139.
12.
ButterfieldL. D.BorgenW. A.AmundsonN. E.MaglioA. S. T. (2005). Fifty years of the critical incident technique: 1954-2004 and beyond. Qualitative Research, 5(4), 475–497.
13.
DeesJ. G. (1998). Enterprising nonprofits. Harvard Business Review, 76(1), 54–67.
14.
DeesJ. G.AndersonB. B. (2003). Sector-bending: Blurring lines between nonprofit and for-profit. Society, 40(4), 16–27.
15.
EbrahimA.BattilanaJ.MairJ. (2014). The governance of social enterprises: Mission drift and accountability challenges in hybrid organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, 34, 81–100.
16.
EisenhardtK. M. (1989). Building theories from case study research. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532–550.
17.
FitzgeraldT.ShepherdD. (2018). Emerging structures for social enterprises within nonprofits: An institutional logics perspective. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 47(3), 474–492.
18.
FlanaganJ. C. (1954). The critical incident technique. Psychological Bulletin, 51(4), 327–358.
19.
FlyvbjergB. (2006). Five misunderstandings about case-study research. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(2), 219–245.
20.
Fundació Un Sol Món [One World Foundation]. (2008). Roba Amiga. 7 anys vestint xarxa [Roba Amiga. 7 years knitting network]. Coordinated by P. Veciana i Botet; Data analysis and writing: A. Balletbó i Roldán. Caixa Catalunya.
21.
GastJ.FilserM.GundolfK.KrausS. (2015). Coopetition research: Towards a better understanding of past trends and future directions. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 24(4), 492–521.
22.
GioiaD. A.CorleyK. G.HamiltonA. L. (2013). Seeking qualitative rigor in inductive research. Organizational Research Methods, 16(1), 15–31.
23.
GnyawaliD. R.ParkB.-J. (2009). Co-opetition and technological innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises: A multilevel conceptual model. Journal of Small Business Management, 47(3), 308–330.
24.
GnyawaliD. R.ParkB.-J. (2011). Co-opetition between giants: Collaboration with competitors for technological innovation. Research Policy, 40(5), 650–663.
25.
GnyawaliD. R.SongY. (2016). Pursuit of rigor in research: Illustration from coopetition literature. Industrial Marketing Management, 57, 12–22.
26.
HaighN.WalkerJ.BacqS.KickulJ. (2015). Hybrid organizations: Origins, strategies, impacts, and implications. California Management Review, 57(3), 5–12.
27.
HardyC.PhillipsN.LawrenceT. B. (2003). Resources, knowledge and influence: The organizational effects of interorganizational collaboration. Journal of Management Studies, 40(2), 321–347.
28.
HerbstJ. M. (2019). Harnessing sustainable development from niche marketing and coopetition in social enterprises. Business Strategy and Development, 2, 152–165.
29.
HongJ. F.SnellR. S. (2015). Knowledge development through co-opetition: A case study of a Japanese foreign subsidiary and its local suppliers. Journal of World Business, 50(4), 769–780.
30.
HorneS. (1998). Charity shops in the UK. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 26(4), 155–161.
31.
KhavulS.ChavezH.BrutonG. D. (2013). When institutional change outruns the change agent: The contested terrain of entrepreneurial microfinance for those in poverty. Journal of Business Venturing, 28(1), 30–50.
32.
KotelesB.CasasnovasG.VernisA. (2013). Stories of scale: Nine cases of growth in social enterprises. Institute for Social Innovation, ESADE.
33.
LangleyA. (1999). Strategies for theorizing from process data. Academy of Management Review, 24(4), 691–710.
34.
LuoX.SlotegraafR.PanX. (2006). Cross-functional “coopetition”: The simultaneous role of cooperation and competition within firms. Journal of Marketing, 70(2), 67–80.
35.
MongelliL.RullaniF.VersariP. (2017). Hybridisation of diverging institutional logics through common-note practices—An analogy with music and the case of social enterprises. Industry and Innovation, 24(5), 492–514.
36.
NajamA. (2003). The four-C’s of third sector-government relations. Nonprofit Management & Leadership, 10(4), 375–396.
37.
NikolovaM. (2015). Government funding of private voluntary organizations. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 44(3), 487–509.
38.
PacheA.-C.SantosF. (2013). Inside the hybrid organization: Selective coupling as a response to competing institutional logics. Academy of Management Journal, 56(4), 972–1001.
39.
PadulaG.DagninoG. B. (2007). Untangling the rise of coopetition: The intrusion of competition in a cooperative game structure. International Studies of Management & Organization, 37(2), 32–52.
40.
PlankoJ.ChappinM. M. H.CramerJ.HekkertM. P. (2019). Coping with coopetition—Facing dilemmas in cooperation for sustainable development: The case of the Dutch smart grid industry. Business Strategy and the Environment, 28(5), 665–674.
41.
SharpZ. (2018). Existential angst and identity rethink: The complexities of competition for the nonprofit. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 47(4), 767–788.
42.
SiegnerM.PinkseJ.PanwarR. (2018). Managing tensions in a social enterprise: The complex balancing act to deliver a multi-faceted but coherent social mission. Journal of Cleaner Production, 174, 1314–1324.
43.
SkelcherC.SmithS. R. (2015). Theorizing hybridity: Institutional logics, complex organizations, and actor identities: The case of nonprofits. Public Administration, 93(2), 433–448.
44.
SmithW. K.GoninM.BesharovM. L. (2013). Managing social-business tensions: A review and research agenda for social enterprise. Business Ethics Quarterly, 23(3), 407–442.
45.
SmithW. K.LewisM. W. (2011). Toward a theory of paradox: A dynamic equilibrium model of organizing. Academy of Management Review, 36(2), 381–403.
46.
TsaiW. (2002). Social structure of “coopetition” within a multiunit organization: Coordination, competition, and intraorganizational knowledge sharing. Organization Science, 13(2), 179–190.
47.
VernisA.IglesiasM. (2010). Empresas que inspiran futuro. Ocho casos de emprendedores sociales [Companies that inspire the future. Eight cases of social enterpreneurs]. Institute for Social Innovation, ESADE.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
