Coopetition as an Emergent Strategy: Empirical Evidence from an Italian Consortium of Opera Houses

In the advancing coopetition strategy literature, firms are often seen as organizations making coopetitive arrangements in an intentional fashion. Drawing on the received distinction between deliberate and emergent strategies, this paper innovatively analyzes the formation of coopetition as an unintended and therefore emergent strategy. More specifically, an in-depth case study on a renowned consortium of Italian opera houses is proposed to illustrate the role played by the external environment (e.g., the institutional one) in triggering coopetitive strategies through the imposition of cooperation. Accordingly, the specific strategic learning processes that actually intervene in the formation of coopetition are identified, and the two related brand-new concepts of imposed cooperation and induced coopetition are introduced and discussed.