Leveraging the Dominant Pole: How Champions of an Industry-Wide Environmental Alliance Navigate Coopetition Paradoxes

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Author(s)Slawinski, Natalie
Author(s)Smith, Wendy K.
Author(s)Van der Byl, Connie A.
Date Accessioned2024-07-16T19:20:12Z
Date Available2024-07-16T19:20:12Z
Publication Date2024-05-29
DescriptionThis article was originally published in Journal of Management OnlineFirst 2024. © The Author(s) 2024. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063241252762. Article Reuse Guidelines https://sagepub.com/journals-permissions
AbstractCompanies increasingly collaborate with competitors to innovate, minimize risks, and address sustainability crises. However, these alliances often falter or fail due to challenges arising from coopetition paradoxes—contradictory yet interdependent tensions between competition and cooperation. Extant research predominantly focuses on addressing these paradoxes through seeking a stable balance between competition and cooperation; however, we lack in-depth processual understandings of how to navigate these paradoxes as they shift over time. To address this gap in the literature, we analyze longitudinal data over the 3 years it took to establish Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA), the unlikely alliance across 13 competitive Canadian oil sands companies to improve their industry’s environmental performance. We noted the role of competition, which we label as the dominant pole—the more powerful of two paradoxical poles—and identify leveraging the dominant pole as a core mechanism for navigating intensifying coopetition paradoxes. Rather than diminishing the dominant competition pole, alliance champions leveraged competition to enable cooperation aided by a paradox mindset. These findings reorient coopetition scholarship away from seeking stability between the two forces, toward a processual understanding of how to navigate the shifting coopetition paradoxes in alliances over time.
SponsorThe author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the Carbon Management Canada Network of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program (project number D228).
CitationSlawinski, N., Smith, W. K., & Van der Byl, C. A. (2024). Leveraging the Dominant Pole: How Champions of an Industry-Wide Environmental Alliance Navigate Coopetition Paradoxes. Journal of Management, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063241252762
ISSN1557-1211
URLhttps://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/34579
Languageen_US
PublisherJournal of Management
dc.rightsAttribution 4.0 Internationalen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Keywordsparadox
Keywordscoopetition
Keywordsstrategic alliances
Keywordsqualitative methods
Keywordsgrand challenges
Keywordsresponsible consumption and production
Keywordsclimate action
Keywordspartnerships for the goals
TitleLeveraging the Dominant Pole: How Champions of an Industry-Wide Environmental Alliance Navigate Coopetition Paradoxes
TypeArticle
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