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In contrast to the conventional strategic management research, which emphasizes either cooperation or competition as a beneficial strategy, emerging literature on coopetition has advanced our understanding of how pursuing both cooperation and competition can yield greater benefits. However, the literature offers limited insights into the multi-level dynamics of coopetition and the role of top management teams (TMT) in navigating paradoxical tensions that cascade across levels ' tensions that, if not tackled well, can overturn the benefits associated with coopetition. Drawing on the paradox literature, this paper develops a conceptual model to illustrate how the coopetition paradox unfolds across different levels, activating performing, organizing, and belonging tensions, that, in turn, shape the interplay between cooperation and competition at the inter-firm level. A key contribution of this paper is its focus on the central role of TMTs in managing multiple tensions across levels, particularly through the synchronous orchestration of internal processes at the firm level while constantly navigating coopetitive interactions at the inter-firm level.

Research points to public-private collaboration’s importance for supporting the transformation from linear to circular business models. As little is known of such collaboration, we conducted a 4-year in-depth case study to answer how transformation is affected by two types of tensions: between linear and circular elements and between public and private partners. We find that tensions shape the transformational process into a dialectical pattern, as partners’ institutional differences initially cause them to conflict over whether to focus on linear or circular elements but, over time, arrive at a synthesis. Our findings contribute to circular business model research by illustrating the usefulness of understanding transformational challenges as linear-circular tensions and by illuminating the dialectics of transformational processes.

Prior research has traditionally understood the dynamic nature of coopetition as shifts between relational states of coopetition over time and has treated coopetition interplay and coopetitive dynamics tautologically. This understanding is problematic because it fails to capture the continuous flux of changes in coopetitive relationships based on the finer details of partners' situated interactions on the micro-level. To overcome this limitation, this conceptual paper introduces the interaction perspective on coopetition, which allows us to uncover the microfoundations of the cooperation-competition interplay that bring about shifts in coopetitive relationships. By focusing researchers' attention on managers' reflecting-in-action, coopetition work that propels temporal interactions, and the relational embeddedness of their interactions, the interaction perspective helps us better understand the dynamic nature of coopetition and uncover the coopetitive dynamics feeding into the coopetition interplay and triggering moves towards new relational states. This paper makes four key contributions to the coopetition literature, outlines methodological implications of the suggested interaction perspective, and identifies avenues for further research.

Paradox theory often overlooks how (inter)organizational paradoxes interact and evolve within a processual context, both conceptually and empirically. This study delves into such 'knotting' by examining coopetition for sustainability, wherein competitors collaborate to address simultaneously economic, environmental and social concerns. We introduce a novel conceptualization of knotted paradoxes through the lens of system dynamics (SD). Within this SD framework, a knotted paradox is portrayed as a complex dynamic system characterized by contradictory cause-effect interactions forming intertwined balancing and reinforcing causality loops. This perspective facilitates a systemic understanding of the complex and dynamic nature of knotted paradoxes. We apply our conceptualization to explore an in-depth case study of how seven construction and housing firms collaborate and compete to plan a new sustainable residential area in a Swedish city. By constructing causal-loop models we examine how knotted coopetition and sustainability paradoxes exacerbate and mitigate each other, oscillating in their dominance through various processes over time. Through our analysis we distinguish three patterns of vicious cycles indicative of dysfunctional paradox evolution: Fading, Accelerating, and Mixed dynamics.

The growing cultural and creative sector has been argued to be an important catalyst for revitalization and development of other industries, cities, and regions through innovative value creation based on a logic with a focus on cultural and creative values rather than on growth and scalability. We argue that in attempting to realize such positive effects, cultural and creative entrepreneurs (CC entrepreneurs) face challenges, including liabilities of smallness, newness, and uniqueness, and of creating an identity, legitimacy and understanding of their value in interaction with partners. In coping with these challenges, boundary work becomes critical, and this paper explores the boundary work of CC entrepreneurs. Based on our qualitative study we use three narratives to illustrate our analysis of how the entrepreneurs engage in boundary work. We find that CC entrepreneurs set and maintain, as well as span and cross boundaries to overcome challenges of identity and develop their distinctiveness and belonging, and to overcome liabilities through cooperating across boundaries or expanding their scope. We also show that boundary work can be a joint effort by CC entrepreneurs, facilitated by creating boundary spaces, individuals taking on boundary roles, and through using boundary objects. 

Increased focus on sustainability has made firms' value creation increasingly boundary spanning and complex. This begs the question of how business model research describes firm's external relationships, motivating us to undertake a systematic literature review. In analyzing 49 articles, we discuss and problematize four conceptualizations of external relationships - collaboration, alliances, networks, and ecosystems - arriving at nine propositions that clarify their meaning and refer to either firm-centric or collective business models for sustainability. In combining these findings with review results from conventional business model research we identify three main blind spots in extant business model for sustainability research, regarding coopetition, wider inter-organizational and sustainability tensions, and power. Based on these blind spots, we sketch a research agenda that could theorize business models for sustainability without neglecting their inherent tensions and contradictions.

Cross-sectoral collaboration is argued to be vital for business model innovation for sustainability and the tension-filled choices it involves but brings its own complexities. We therefore investigate how institutional logics and power affect the interests and dependencies of City planners and real-estate developers involved in developing a business model for sustainable mobility. Through analyzing how partners deal with tension-filled choices regarding business model elements, we develop a model to explain how compromises are made in partnerships characterized by conflicting interests coupled to strong interdependencies. We finish by cautioning that conflicting interests and power characteristics may delimit the potential for such cross-sectoral collaborations to contribute to sustainable development in sectors where public actors are used to rely on their authority.

Trust and distrust are two distinct organizing principles that play a critical role in interorganizational projects where highly interdependent organizations collaborate to build tailor-made and technologically complex solutions. Whereas an emerging body of research has debated the conceptual distinction between trust and distrust, this paper emphasizes the processual nature of trusting and distrusting and the interplay between them. Drawing upon insights from project-based collaboration in a complex products and systems industry, we explore the distinct cognitive and behavioral mechanisms through which trust and distrust work and orient firms towards optimism and watchfulness in the interaction. Our findings show that trust and distrust can act both as substitutes and complements through three interconnected dynamics—undermining, enabling, and compensating. These dynamics develop and recursively interrelate through interfirm interactions within single projects and in the broader network. We conclude by presenting our contributions to interorganizational trust literature and by proposing that the interplay of trust and distrust can have both positive and negative effects on the pursuit of project-based relationships.

Organizational members are likely to face more than one paradox simultaneously. In order to conceptualize how paradoxes are knotted together and influence each other, paradox research needs to better account for dynamics and integrative aspects. In this paper we introduce the System Dynamics approach which we apply to coopetition for sustainability. Via an in-depth case study of a large-scale Swedish project to create a brand new, sustainable residential area, we are able to trace how the two paradoxes (coopetition and sustainability) influence each other but also take turns in dominating the processual unfolding. Our study contributes by developing and illustrating an approach to conceptualizing knotted paradoxes in general and coopetition for sustainability in particular.