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To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2008.00565.x Byline: Tzu-Ju Ann Peng (**), Mike Bourne ([dagger]) Abstract: The issue of coopetition, the coexistence of cooperation and competition, has recently come to the fore in the strategic management field. Previous coopetition research has focused on the intra-organizational level, inter-organizational level and triad level, but less attention has been paid to coopetition at the network level. The purpose of this paper is to address the coexistence of competition and cooperation between networks, and to depict how networks with different structures interact with each other. Drawing from a detailed case study of two healthcare networks in Taiwan, we demonstrate how they first initiated competition, followed by cooperation and then coopetition. From our analysis of this example of network coopetition, we develop three propositions that address the forces driving competition and cooperation and the different structures that allow competition and cooperation to coexist. We found that two organizations will compete and cooperate simultaneously when each organization has complementary but distinctly different sets of resources and when the field of competition is distinctly separate from the field of cooperation. In addition, two networks will find it easier to balance competition and cooperation when each network has compatible but distinctly different structures. We argue that the simultaneous existence of cooperation and competition is not dependent on closeness to the customer, as previously suggested in the literature, but on the balance between the forces for cooperation and for competition. We suggest from this research that networks can maintain the balance between competition and cooperation when they act using different structures. Finally, we discuss the implications of the value of competition and then coopetition at multiple levels of analysis and the implications for future research from a practical perspective. Author Affiliation: (**)Department of Business Administration, Providence University, Taiwan ([dagger])Centre for Business Performance, Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield, Bedford MK43 0AL, UKEmail:tjpeng@pu.edu.tw;ann.peng@cranfield.ac.uk;m.bourne@cranfield.ac.uk

Coopetition has become a heated issue in the last decade. In this study, a scrutinized review of previous research on coopetition is presented to clarify the research stream on coopetition, from which the implications are derived and a framework to analyse the phenomenon is proposed. Given the complex nature of coopetition, an in-depth case study was undertaken to investigate the competition-cooperation relationship and coopetition performance over a 15-year period in a Taiwanese supermarket network, which was formed by a focal company and its competitors. Performance was analysed before and after launching the coopetition strategy, in which 31 indicators were examined. The findings imply that competition ( Y ang) and cooperation ( Y in) are reciprocally rooted in and mutually promoted by each other. The findings also confirmed that cooperation with competitors did lead to better performance, at least over a period, in two ways. The first was that the adoption of coopetition permitted the attainment of performance levels beyond what would otherwise have been possible; the second was that the adoption of coopetition changed the timeframe, permitting earlier achievement of higher performance levels. This study contributes to and extends knowledge of the dynamics and consequences of cooperation with competitors and demonstrates that coopetition has a significant temporary advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]