Coopetition with frenemies: Towards modeling of simultaneous cooperation and competition among enterprises

Abstract

Enterprise modeling frameworks are concerned with the representation of social phenomena and researchers have proposed a number of notations and techniques for depicting social behaviors. However, coopetition, which is a specific type of social interaction, has not been explored in the enterprise modeling literature. Coopetition, which refers to simultaneous cooperation and competition, has been studied extensively in the social sciences where conceptual theorizing and empirical fieldwork have established it as a prominent field of research. It is regularly observed in dealings between many kinds of enterprises, such as businesses and governments, where it has been analyzed at both inter- as well as intra-organizational levels. Coopetition is especially relevant for enterprise modeling because goal alignment/convergence can yield cooperation among actors while goal conflict/divergence can lead to competition among actors. In this paper we (a) present an overview of academic research into coopetition, (b) discuss the requirements for representing coopetition, and (c) propose future work that will be relevant for the modeling and analysis of cooperation, competition, and coopetition between enterprises.