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Trust has been acknowledged as an important aspect of interorganizational relationships. Yet, limited attention has been paid to the importance of trust in the light of coopetitive interactions, i.e. simultaneously cooperating and competing. Research on trust has started to acknowledge that more trust may not always be better, and that trust and distrust are separate and distinct phenomena. Whilst coopetition research has mentioned the important role of trust, the potential role of distrust is even less acknowledged, although it may be particularly relevant due to the tensions, risks, and uncertainties involved. The purpose of this paper is to identify limitations and gaps in the extant literature on trust in coopetition, bring promising research opportunities into light, and create an agenda for future research focused on the roles of both trust and distrust in coopetition. By means of a systematic literature review, we find that the importance of trust in different phases of coopetition has been acknowledged by prior research, yet deeper explanations of how, when, and why different aspects of trust and distrust matter to coopetition are missing. A normative view on trust prevails and the potential fruitfulness of distrust is neglected. Based on these limitations, an agenda including six promising research avenues is constructed.

It is widely acknowledged that firms intensely engage in coopetition (i.e., simultaneous cooperation and competition) and obtain unique benefits from such relationships. However, limited knowledge exists about how and when coopetition intensity leads to superior performance. Building on the theoretical work documenting that both trust and distrust are critical for enhancing performance in interfirm relationships, we address the aforementioned gap by looking into the distinct yet beneficial roles of trust and distrust in coopetition. More specifically, we argue that whereas trust likely serves as an intervening mechanism through which coopetition intensity enhances relationship performance, distrust positively influences the association between coopetition intensity and relationship performance. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 225 Swedish firms engaged in coopetition, and provide empirical evidence that trust and distrust play distinct yet important roles in achieving superior performance from coopetition.

Strategic alliances have mushroomed in the contemporary landscape. Yet a plethora of them fail to satisfy the partners' strategic objectives. To sustain successful alliances, firms and the individuals involved need to cope with the inherent interpartner risks and uncertainties, which exist on multiple levels and make the interactions among the partners challenging. From an interpretive perspective, prior research has identified that interpretive schemes are critical for alliance managers to make sense and cope with unexpected events that raise concerns about the partner's future behavior. In particular, two alternative interpretive schemes have been suggested, namely sensemaking of chaos and sensemaking in chaos (Das & Kumar, 2010). Whereas the former drives alliance managers to calculate and mitigate exchange hazards, the latter encourages them to suspend and embrace dark potentialities inherent in strategic alliances. This chapter aims to advance the understanding of the synergistic implication of the two interpretive schemes and to increase clarity regarding when and how these can be integrated. Drawing upon literatures on risk and uncertainty, I argue that while risk is the cornerstone of sensemaking of chaos, uncertainty is the cornerstone of sensemaking in chaos. Building upon this, I suggest that when potentiality is examined from both the prisms of risk and uncertainty, alliance managers engage in the integrative interpretive scheme complexifying the perceived chaos, which assumes that engaging with dark potentialities is a multi-solution task. This encourages succesful engagement with not only predictable and eliminable facets of potentiality, but also with unpredictable and ineliminable ones. Thereby alliance managers can cope with dark potentialities as both calculation and suspension of exchange hazards are enabled. 

Industrial co-creation projects are often complex and ambiguous, involving high levels of interpretive uncertainty over processes and outcomes. To boost the effectiveness of such projects, firms have increasingly adopted virtual reality (VR) technology and have experienced unique benefits by utilizing digital artifacts-interactive objects in digital environments, such as factory installation layouts or design visualizations. This article provides case evidence demonstrating how VR-enabled digital artifacts support firms to effectively implement tailor-made solutions in robotics and automation projects. The adoption of new digital co-creation practices redefines the traditional customer-provider roles in industrial co-creation, increasing engagement, reducing uncertainty, and improving project outcomes.