Industrial Marketing Management 84 (2020) 2–18

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Industrial Marketing Management

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Coopetition and trust: What we know, where to go next☆ T

⁎
Alexander Lascaux
Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Affairs, Moscow, Russia

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This paper offers a systematic review of the main findings concerning the role of trust in coopetitive interactions.
Coopetition It adheres to a multilevel conceptualization of trusting relationships in coopetition, analyzing the manifestations
Trust of trust on the interpersonal, intergroup, interorganizational and inter-network level. It also applies a dynamic
Competition perspective on trust, investigating its antecedents, development processes and outcomes in coopetitive colla-
Cooperation
boration. Finally, it suggests some directions for future research of trusting relationships forged among coope-
titors.

1. Introduction scholars, we adopt a perspective of paradox and ensuing tensions be-

A nascent but rapidly developing field of coopetition research has
recently seen a substantial growth in the number of survey articles
(Baglieri, Dagnino, Giarratana, & Gutiérrez, 2008; Bengtsson, Eriksson,
& Wincent, 2010; Bengtsson & Kock, 2014; Bengtsson, Kock, Lundgren-
Henriksson, & Näsholm, 2016; Bengtsson & Raza-Ullah, 2016;
Bouncken, Gast, Kraus, & Bogers, 2015; Czakon, Dagnino, & Le Roy,
2016; Czakon, Fernandez, & Minà, 2014; Czakon, Mucha-Kuś, &
Rogalski, 2014; Dorn, Schweiger, & Albers, 2016; Gast, Filser, Gundolf,
& Kraus, 2015; Le Roy & Czakon, 2016; Le Roy, Dagnino, & Czakon,
2016), which signify considerable advancements in studying various
aspects of coopetitive relationships, both within and between organi-
zations. Astonishingly, however, this literature almost completely ne-
glects the role of interpartner trust in coopetition. The issue of trust is
given short shrift at best (Baglieri et al., 2008; Bengtsson et al., 2010;
Bengtsson & Raza-Ullah, 2016; Czakon, Fernandez, & Minà, 2014),1
with an exception of a somewhat more comprehensive coverage in Dorn
et al. (2016), where trust is treated as one of dyadic factors conditioning
further cooperation between competing firms.
Meanwhile, insufficient attention paid to trust in a coopetitive
context represents a significant shortcoming in understanding the
nature of coopetition. If, following a vast number of coopetition
tween coopetitors as a primary conceptual lens through which coope-
titive processes and outcomes can be explored and interpreted
(Bengtsson, Raza-Ullah, & Vanyushyn, 2016; Chen, 2008; Clarke-Hill,
Li, & Davies, 2003; Fernandez & Chiambaretto, 2016; Fernandez, Ji, &
Yami, 2014; Fernandez, Le Roy, & Gnyawali, 2014; Gnyawali,
Madhavan, He, & Bengtsson, 2016; Lado, Boyd, & Hanlon, 1997; Le Roy
& Fernandez, 2015; Raza-Ullah, Bengtsson, & Kock, 2014; Seran,
Pellegrin-Boucher, & Gurau, 2016; Stadtler & Van Wassenhove, 2016;
Tidström, 2014), then trust can be viewed as the focal point of tensions
and conflicts emerging in coopetitive settings. It is extremely difficult to
develop trusting relationships between direct rivals (Le Roy, Robert, &
Lasch, 2016), yet mutual trust is indispensable for competitors to suc-
cessfully attain the goals specified by their cooperative enterprise (e.g.,
Chin, Chan, & Lam, 2008; Morris, Koçak, & Özer, 2007; Park,
Srivastava, & Gnyawali, 2014; Ritala, Hurmelinna-Laukkanen, &
Blomqvist, 2009). Moreover, the task of managing cooperative projects
embarked upon by rival firms requires the elaboration of specific cap-
abilities to simultaneously maintain the attitudes of trust and distrust
held towards the partners (Gnyawali, He, & Madhavan, 2006; Lewicki,
McAllister, & Bies, 1998), which imminently results in new challenges
faced by organizations engaged in coopetitive interactions. The para-
doxical nature of trust in coopetition, which has to be developed

☆
I am thankful to Professor Anthony Di Benedetto, the Editor of this journal, and the two anonymous reviewers for their extensive comments and suggestions,
which were extremely helpful in clarifying the arguments in this paper.
⁎
Corresponding author at: 84 Vernadskogo prosp, Moscow 119571, Russia.
E-mail address: alexlascaux@yahoo.com.
1
More specifically, Bengtsson et al. (2010) and Bengtsson and Raza-Ullah (2016) point out that studies of cooperation in a coopetitive context frequently draw
upon social exchange theory that focuses on trust, reciprocity and commitment, which are deemed critical factors in determining the competitors' willingness to
collaborate. In a similar vein, Baglieri et al. (2008) suggest further examination of the impact of networks on coopetition strategies, which can be informed by social
network theory with its emphasis on prior experience, reciprocity and trust among network actors. Czakon et al. (2014a) indicate that power, dependence and mutual
trust represent key characteristics of coopetition deserving further investigation.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2019.05.015
Received 19 March 2018; Received in revised form 26 May 2019; Accepted 26 May 2019
Available online 31 May 2019
0019-8501/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
A. Lascaux
between firms sustaining two diametrically opposing interaction logics,
competition and cooperation (Bengtsson, Raza-Ullah, & Vanyushyn,
2016; Gnyawali et al., 2016; Raza-Ullah et al., 2014; Stadtler & Van
Wassenhove, 2016), attests to the necessity of studying its drivers and
outcomes with an aim of creating an integrative framework depicting
the multifarious relationships between trust and other characteristics of
coopetitive processes.
Although there might exist different approaches to devising the
typology of coopetition (e.g., Czakon & Rogalski, 2014), the research
field currently tends to be dominated by the multilevel representation
of coopetitive relationships (Chiambaretto & Dumez, 2016; Dahl, 2014;
Dahl, Kock, & Lundgren-Henriksson, 2016; Gnyawali & Park, 2009;
Golnam, Ritala, & Wegmann, 2014; Rajala & Tidström, 2017; Tidström
& Rajala, 2016; Westra, Angeli, Carree, & Ruwaard, 2017; Wilhelm,
2011). Coopetition is believed to generate diverse experiences and
allow for different interpretations on various levels of analysis
(Fernandez, Le Roy, & Gnyawali, 2014; Raza-Ullah et al., 2014).
Therefore, in this paper we assume a multilevel perspective on trust,
focusing on its origins, manifestations and consequences in inter-
personal, intergroup, interorganizational and inter-network coopetitive
settings. By adopting a multilevel view of trust in coopetition, we also
respond to Bouncken et al.'s (2015) call for bridging multiple levels in
coopetitive research in order to create an integrative framework linking
the coopetitors' activities at and across various levels of interaction.
Beyond this hierarchical approach to studying the role of trust in
coopetition, we also examine partners' trusting expectations through
the prism of dynamic changes affecting coopetitive settings. This mode
of analysis is inspired by the Drivers, Process and Outcomes framework
of coopetition suggested by Bengtsson and Raza-Ullah (2016), who
emphasize the need to create an overarching and dynamic multilevel
model of coopetition capable of explaining what drives coopetition,
what happens in coopetitive interactions and what effects on partici-
pating firms can be observed after the completion of coopetitive pro-
jects. Viewing coopetition as a dynamic phenomenon (Bengtsson, Kock,
et al., 2016) paves the way for investigating the temporal patterns of
trusting relationships between coopetitors through exploring the ante-
cedents, processes and outcomes of trust in the coopetitive realm. As
proposed above, these studies can be arranged at four distinct levels of
analysis (interpersonal, intergroup, interfirm and inter-network), which
yields twelve potential combinations for scrutinizing the role of trust in
coopetitive relationships.
The main purpose of this paper is to create a comprehensive, dy-
namic, multilevel framework capable of explaining the significance of
trust in coopetition. To achieve this aim, we develop the typology of
trust-based interactions in coopetitive settings and present a thorough
overview of the studies that examine the antecedents, processes and
outcomes of trust at various levels of coopetitive relationships.
Throughout the paper, we refer to coopetition as ‘a paradoxical re-
lationship between two or more actors simultaneously involved in co-
operative and competitive interactions, regardless of whether their re-
lationship is horizontal or vertical’ (Bengtsson & Kock, 2014), p. 182.
We also adhere to Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman's (1995), p. 712 classic
definition of trust as ‘the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the
actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will
perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the
ability to monitor or control that other party.’ Table 1 contains an
overview of a sample of previous studies that have explicitly addressed
the problems of trust in coopetition and whose primary focus was to
investigate the processes of emergence and development of trust at
various levels of coopetitive interactions.
In the following sections, we will survey the main results achieved
by researchers on each dimension of the above conceptual model and
suggest possible avenues for enhancing our understanding of the cor-
responding links between trust and coopetition. Notably, there may be
a difference between the level at which coopetition occurs (whether it is
individuals, groups, firms or networks that engage in competitive/
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Industrial Marketing Management 84 (2020) 2–18
cooperative activities) and the level of trust, which is analyzed in a
particular coopetitive environment. For example, we can distinguish
between interpersonal, intergroup and interorganizational levels of
trust, all of which can be observed in interorganizational coopetitive
collaboration. In a similar vein, interpersonal trusting attitudes can
arise in both interfirm and intra-firm coopetitive interactions.
2. Trust in competitive and non-competitive settings
The concept of trust has been extensively researched in manage-
ment and organization literature. Below we present a concise summary
of these studies based on the antecedents-processes-outcomes model
charted above.
An examination of the antecedent factors leading to trust allowed
scholars to introduce several prominent classifications of this phe-
nomenon. Mayer et al. (1995) distinguish between the trustee's per-
ceived ability (competencies and skills), moral integrity and bene-
volence to the trustor. McAllister (1995) divides the foundations of
interpersonal trust in organizations into cognitive (relying upon avail-
able knowledge and reasonable belief) and affective (consisting of the
emotional bonds between individuals). In addition, research on the
antecedents of interorganizational trust has revealed a number of fac-
tors that contribute to the emergence and development of trust between
non-competing firms, such as relational openness, mutual dependence,
the prior exchange history and the expectations of continuity in inter-
firm relationships (De Jong & Klein Woolthuis, 2008; Gulati, 1995;
Poppo, Zhou, & Ryu, 2008). Since trusting attitudes can be observed at
the different levels of interaction between partnering firms, studies of
interorganizational trust have been accompanied by the exploration of
interpersonal and intergroup trust arising in the context of collabora-
tion between non-rival firms (e.g., Ferrin, Bligh, & Kohles, 2008;
Huang, Gattiker, & Schwarz, 2008; Lau & Rowlinson, 2009; Lui, Ngo, &
Hon, 2006; Zaheer, McEvily, & Perrone, 1998).
Referring to the evolution of trusting attitudes, Lewicki and Bunker
(1995, 1996) indicate that trust can sequentially pass through several
developmental stages, from calculus-based (shaped by cost-benefit
analysis) to knowledge-based (grounded in the partner's behavioral
predictability) and then to identification-based stage (assuming a full
internalization of the partner's desires and intentions). Additionally,
researchers discriminate between mutual trust and unilateral or asym-
metric trusting attitudes (Fink & Kraus, 2007; Svensson, 2005, 2006),
underscoring their differential impact on the evolving interfirm re-
lationships (Graebner, 2009; Thomas & Skinner, 2010). They also de-
velop a concept of swift trust (Crisp & Jarvenpaa, 2013; Meyerson,
Weick, & Kramer, 1996), which denotes individuals' pre-experience
trusting attitudes towards their coworkers, subject to further empirical
verification in collaborative activities.
Management scholars have also established important links between
trust and the outcomes of interfirm cooperation in a non-competitive
environment. Organization studies have clearly demonstrated that trust
helps improve firm performance in collaborative projects (Costa e Silva,
Bradley, & Sousa, 2012; Krishnan, Martin, & Noorderhaven, 2006),
reduce transaction costs in cross-firm interactions (Dyer, 1997; Dyer &
Chu, 2003; Dyer & Singh, 1998; Zaheer et al., 1998), diminish the
threat of partners' opportunistic behavior (Gulati, 1995; Parkhe, 1993)
and intensify the process of interfirm knowledge sharing (Becerra,
Lunnan, & Huemer, 2008; Kale, Singh, & Perlmutter, 2000).
As Dorn et al. (2016) rightly observe, future research on trust under
coopetition can and should be built on the extensive array of results
achieved in studying the antecedents, dynamics and outcomes of trust
in non-competitive settings. Coopetitive interfirm relationships, how-
ever, differ from the patterns of cooperation between non-rival partners
on a number of important aspects. Collaboration between competing
firms is marked by inevitable tensions generated by the conflicts be-
tween (1) cooperative intent in a jointly run project and interpartner
rivalry in the broader market (Bengtsson & Kock, 2000; Bengtsson,
A. Lascaux Industrial Marketing Management 84 (2020) 2–18

Table 1
Major studies focused on exploring the role of trust in a coopetitive context.
Articles Objects of study Main findings

Interpersonal level
Lin et al. (2010)
Baruch and Lin (2012)
Virtual team members in IT organizations Perceived trust among team members is positively related to cooperative attitude and
negatively related to competitive conflict
Coopetitive teams in IT organizations Trust-based social capital is positively related to knowledge sharing and team
performance, and this relationship is mediated by cooperation among team members

Intergroup level
Tsai (2002)
Seran et al. (2016)
Coopetition between organizational units
Interunit coopetition in France's leading banks
Trust-promoting social interaction is more positively associated with knowledge sharing
among organizational units that are competing with each other than among units that
are not competing with each other
Trust-based informal coordination complements formal managerial methods and
reduces tensions within a multiunit organization

Interorganizational level
Luo (2007)
Morris et al. (2007)
Chin et al. (2008)
Castaldo and Dagnino (2009)
Ritala et al. (2009)
Bengtsson et al. (2010)
Bouncken and Fredrich (2012)
Lacoste (2012)
Fernandez, Le Roy, and
Gnyawali (2014)
Park et al. (2014)
Wu (2014)
Bouncken et al. (2016)
Czernek and Czakon (2016)
Global cooperating rivals
Coopetitive collaboration between small firms in
Turkey
Strategic management of coopetition in Hong Kong
manufacturing
A dynamic model of evolving coopetition
Collaborative development of service innovation
Different types of coopetitive interactions and the
resulting dynamics of coopetition
Coopetitive collaboration between German IT firms
Vertical coopetition between industrial buyers and
suppliers
Coopetition between the two European
manufacturers of telecommunications satellites
Interfirm alliances operating in the semiconductor
industry
Collaborative product innovation in Chinese firms
Vertical alliances in the medical device industry
Dyadic collaboration between competing tourism
firms in Poland
Weak interorganizational trust between two global players may intensify competition
and retard cooperation (a contending situation), while a high level of trust between
multinational enterprises allows them to seek stronger interparty ties (a partnering
situation)
With regard to the trust dimension, small firms are more likely to partner with
competitors perceived to be honest and reliable
The development of trust is one of the critical success factors in implementing
coopetitive strategy
The evolution of trust types (from calculus-based to knowledge-based and then to value-
based trust) is assumed to have a powerful impact on how coopetition unfolds
Trust is assumed to be the necessary complement to the contractual framework in
managing coopetitive service development
Under weak cooperation and strong competition, interfirm trust can be overly low,
making it difficult to collaborate; contrariwise, under strong cooperation and weak
competition, a high level of trust is supposed to facilitate knowledge exchange between
the partners
The positive effect of an institutionalized alliance function on the intensity of coopetition
is smaller under high trust and low dependency compared to the opposite alternative,
low trust and high dependency
Key accounts have developed hybrid forms of vertical exchange with their suppliers,
which combine competitive pricing with a high level of trust
By entrusting the management of the interorganizational collaboration to a third party,
companies can focus their attention on competition
The intensity of trust-based cooperation of a focal firm with its partners has a positive
relationship with the focal firm's coopetition-based innovation; however, beyond a
certain level, the benefits of increasing intensity of cooperation will come at a declining
rate
Trust-related cooperation with competitors has an inverted U-shaped relationship with a
partnering firm's product innovation performance
Trust-based relational governance has a positive interaction effect with coopetition on
product innovativeness in vertical alliances
One trust-building process – the cost/benefit calculation – is shown to be necessary for
competing firms to enter into collaborative relationships

Inter-network level
Czakon and Czernek (2016)
Mariani (2016)
Network coopetition among Poland's tourism firms Reputation-based trust, along with third-party legitimation, facilitates the decision to
enter into network coopetition
Coopetition among Italian tourism destinations Trust-based coordination mechanisms are more effective than contracts in determining
how joint activities should be carried out among competing networks

Raza-Ullah, & Vanyushyn, 2016; Raza-Ullah et al., 2014), (2) collective
efforts at creating value in a partnership and competitive attempts at
capturing the outcomes of collaboration (Bengtsson & Kock, 2014;
Fernandez, Le Roy, & Gnyawali, 2014), (3) the need to invest in-
tellectual resources into common activities and the necessity to protect
the firm's knowledge and other intangible assets from appropriation by
rivals (Bengtsson & Kock, 2014; Fernandez & Chiambaretto, 2016;
Fernandez, Le Roy, & Gnyawali, 2014).
These ingrained contradictions greatly complicate the attainment of
trust between coopetitors. Yet, at the same time, the absence or
shortage of interpartner trust jeopardizes the cooperative element of
coopetition, inhibiting knowledge transfer (e.g., Enberg, 2012; Salvetat,
Géraudel, & d'Armagnac, 2013), constraining performance (e.g., Della
Corte & Aria, 2016; Pellegrin-Boucher, Le Roy, & Gurău, 2013) and
generally impeding collaboration in a joint project. That trust becomes
yet another manifestation of the paradoxes of coopetition (Bengtsson,
Raza-Ullah, & Vanyushyn, 2016; Gnyawali et al., 2016; Raza-Ullah
et al., 2014; Stadtler & Van Wassenhove, 2016) calls for an in-depth
investigation of its variegated roles in coopetitive relationships. We
now turn to exploring the key dimensions of trust at different levels of
coopetitive interactions.
3. Methodology
We have conducted a comprehensive search of the relevant studies
on trust in coopetition by using the Zetoc service, which provides access
to the British Library's Electronic Table of Contents (ETOC). This da-
tabase covers over 29,000 research journals, which are either received
by the British Library or licensed for use through its Document Supply
Services. The Zetoc Search service allows scholars to search over 52
million journal articles and conference papers that range from 1993 to
date and are updated daily.
In the first phase of the selection process, we used the Article Title
field in the Zetoc Search service, sequentially entering the keywords
‘coopetition’ (which yielded 205 records), ‘co-opetition’ (87 entries),
‘coopetitive’ (41 records) and ‘co-opetitive’ (13 entries). Overall, we

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A. Lascaux Industrial Marketing Management 84 (2020) 2–18

have identified 346 entries in all four search lists. After retrieving the
search results, we moved to the second phase of screening, which
consisted in checking the full texts of the previously identified articles
for mentioning the term ‘trust’ and its various derivatives (such as
‘trusting’, ‘trustful’, ‘trustworthiness’ and the like) in any meaningful
context (i.e. beyond a purely rhetorical usage). By applying this tech-
nique, we aimed to locate all scholarly articles capable of generating
insights on the role of trust in coopetitive settings, through either
presenting theoretical arguments or providing empirical results. Such a
detailed evaluation of the article content allowed us to extract 59 stu-
dies belonging to this category.
In the third phase of searching, we have also identified 15 articles
that discussed certain facets of trust in coopetition, but did not contain
the previously used search words in the title. These studies were located
through snowballing, using the references from the already assembled
articles. We added these publications to the list of primary sources
compiled earlier. The resulting amount of 73 journal articles and 1 book
chapter formed the basis for further inquiry. Of the total number of 74
publications, 15 sources examine interpersonal trust in coopetitive
projects, 6 are devoted to studying intergroup trusting attitudes in a
coopetitive context, 51 consider interorganizational trust between
coopetitors and 2 reflect on inter-network trusting expectations arising
in coopetition. Table 2 lists the full set of sources, which are distributed
across the different levels of trust and temporal stages of coopetitive
relationships. This set of studies forms a basis for further exploration of
the role of trust in coopetitive settings.
This study has followed recommendations from authoritative
sources on composing literature reviews (Cooper, 1998; Creswell, 2014;
Hart, 2018) by (1) presenting the current state of knowledge concerning
multiple relations between coopetition and trust, (2) highlighting im-
portant issues that have been left unresolved by past research, (3)
building bridges between related topic areas and synthesizing existing
knowledge on the role of trust in coopetitive settings, (4) maintaining
clarity, coherence and consistency in reporting the main findings, (5)
revealing shortcomings, inconclusive evidence or contradictions in ex-
tant studies and identifying important avenues for future research.
4. Coopetition and trust on the interpersonal level
The term ‘interpersonal level’ mostly refers to trusting relationships
established between individuals from rival companies setting up col-
laborative projects, but can also be extended to cover interactions
between employees of the same firm if the latter fosters coopetition
among its units and subgroups.
4.1. Antecedents of interpersonal trust in coopetitive relationships
The evaluative and emotive aspects of coopetitive relationships
exert a strong influence on whether trust between individuals employed
by rival organizations can emerge and develop in their collaborative
experiences. The reason behind this association is that a situation of
coopetition triggers a strong cognitive and emotional response from
employees involved in coopetitive interactions. Raza-Ullah et al. (2014)
argue that individuals start appraising the dual consequences of si-
multaneously competing and cooperating with the other firm right from
the outset of a coopetitive project. Positive emotions result from an
evaluation of cooperative elements in coopetition, which evokes feel-
ings of satisfaction and trust, while negative emotions follow an eva-
luation of competitive elements in coopetitive settings, which elicits
feelings of fear and distrust. Therefore, through cognitive evaluation
that calls forth certain emotions, coopetition breeds either trust or
distrust, depending upon the prevalence of competitive or cooperative
orientation in the interpersonal relationships.
At the individual level, employees engaged in coopetitive projects
may hold contradictory expectations, respond to conflicting demands
and be torn by divided loyalties. This may get them into a state of
strong emotional ambivalence (Raza-Ullah et al., 2014) or felt tensions
(Gnyawali et al., 2016), which would be detrimental to the climate of
trust, transparency and creativity in their collaboration. Therefore,
managers who are keen to bolster interpersonal trusting attitudes need
to tilt coopetitive interactions away from excess competition. For that
purpose, they can apply relationship management techniques, enhan-
cing helpful aspects of coopetition, which aims at reinforcing trust, and
reducing its problematic elements, which is set to diminish distrust and
sense of vulnerability (Gnyawali et al., 2016). Corporate training that
serves to adjust employees' perception to the new coopetitive reality
and enables them to adopt a more collaborative mindset can also be
helpful in preserving and augmenting trust on the interpersonal level.
For example, in examining a multi-company, cross-sector partnership
involving four global logistics companies whose employees switch be-
tween the competitive and collaborative environments, Stadtler and
Van Wassenhove (2016) emphasize the importance of corporate
training to leverage the partnership spirit across the participating or-
ganizations.

Table 2
A full list of academic sources dealing with the issues of trust in coopetition.
Level of trust Publications

Interpersonal
Antecedents Gnyawali et al., 2016; Raza-Ullah et al., 2014; Stadtler & Van Wassenhove, 2016
Processes Ghobadi & D’Ambra, 2011; Lundgren-Henriksson & Kock, 2016; Raza-Ullah et al., 2014
Outcomes Baruch & Lin, 2012; Czakon, Mucha-Kuś, & Rogalski, 2014; Fernandez & Chiambaretto, 2016; Fernandez, Ji, & Yami, 2014; Geraudel & Salvetat,
2014; Le Roy & Fernandez, 2015; Lin et al., 2010; Quintana-García & Benavides-Velasco, 2004; Tidström, 2014; Wang & Krakover, 2008

Intergroup
Antecedents Seran et al., 2016; Tsai, 2002
Processes Damayanti et al., 2017; Le Roy & Fernandez, 2015; Seran et al., 2016; Strese et al., 2016b
Outcomes Enberg, 2012; Strese et al., 2016a, 2016b

Interorganizational
Antecedents Baglieri et al., 2008; Bengtsson & Raza-Ullah, 2016; Bengtsson et al., 2010; Broløs, 2009; Chen & Miller, 2015; Della Corte & Aria, 2016; Eriksson,
2008a, 2008b; Fernandez, Le Roy, & Gnyawali, 2014; Ingram & Roberts, 2000; Ketchen Jr et al., 2004; Klimas, 2016; Lacoste, 2012, 2014; Lado
et al., 1997; Le Roy, Robert, & Lasch, 2016; Li et al., 2011; Liu et al., 2014; Luo, 2007; Pellegrin-Boucher et al., 2013; Salvetat & Géraudel, 2012;
Von Friedrichs Grängsjö & Gummesson, 2006; Wiener & Saunders, 2014; Wilhelm, 2011; Wilhelm & Kohlbacher, 2011
Processes Bengtsson & Kock, 2000; Dahl, 2014; Rajala & Tidström, 2017; Vanyushyn et al., 2018
Outcomes Akpinar & Vincze, 2016; Bouncken & Fredrich, 2012; Bouncken et al., 2016; Cheng et al., 2008; Chin et al., 2008; Czernek & Czakon, 2016;
Eriksson, 2008a, 2008b; Ho & Ganesan, 2013; Lydeka & Adomavičius, 2007; Morris et al., 2007; Olander et al., 2010; Osarenkhoe, 2010; Park &
Russo, 1996; Park et al., 2014; Perks, 2000; Ritala et al., 2009; Salvetat et al., 2013; Wu, 2014; Yami & Nemeh, 2014
Inter-network Czakon & Czernek, 2016; Mariani, 2016
General and review articles Baglieri et al., 2008; Bengtsson & Raza-Ullah, 2016; Bengtsson et al., 2010; Castaldo & Dagnino, 2009; Czakon, Fernandez, & Minà, 2014; Dorn
et al., 2016; Tidström, 2014; Tidström & Hagberg-Andersson, 2012; Zerbini & Castaldo, 2007

5
A. Lascaux
As a result, we may conclude that the factors leading to the emer-
gence of interpersonal trust in a coopetitive environment include (1)
the outcomes of a cognitive evaluation of the ratio of competitive to
cooperative elements in coopetition, (2) the consequences of emotional
reactions experienced by the individuals involved in coopetitive inter-
actions and (3) the positive results of corporate training programs that
are used to reduce tensions felt in coopetitive settings. The last point
coincides with the outcomes of the studies of interpersonal trust in non-
competing organizations, which emphasize the role of deliberately in-
troduced organizational policies, consistent induction training and the
promotion of a relationship-oriented culture in enhancing trust between
individual employees (Six, 2007; Six & Sorge, 2008). It seems logical
that studies of trust in non-competitive settings do not specifically ad-
dress cognitive and emotional reactions to the conflicting elements
within a single collaborative relationship, since tensions of this kind
become particularly acute precisely in a coopetitive situation, where
individuals have to develop adequate responses to the simultaneity of
competition and cooperation and personally integrate the coopetitive
logic (Fernandez, Le Roy, & Gnyawali, 2014; Gnyawali et al., 2016;
Stadtler & Van Wassenhove, 2016). At the same time, research on in-
terpersonal trust in non-competitive collaboration looks at a wider
array of factors influencing trust at the individuals' level, such as em-
ployees' personal dispositions (Brown, Scott Poole, & Rodgers, 2004;
Ding, Ng, & Cai, 2007; Evans & Revelle, 2008), the degree of perceived
interdependence and complementarity between individuals (Brown
et al., 2004; Williams, 2001) and their structural positions within the
organization (Ferrin, Dirks, & Shah, 2006). Therefore, in the future
studies of interpersonal trust in coopetition, it would be helpful to ex-
amine whether employees' attitudes towards collaboration, their per-
ceived interdependence or their links to other actors in the organiza-
tional network affect the development of trust at the individual level.2
Since coopetition involves a significant amount of informal inter-
actions between individuals, the possible impact of the knowledge in-
crement obtained through informal learning, boundary-spanning roles
and networking activities on the emergence and advancement of in-
terpersonal trust in coopetitive settings represents a fruitful direction
for further inquiry. Another point deserving critical examination con-
sists in whether the sources of interpersonal trust differ in interfirm and
interunit coopetition, as the latter undergoes the unifying influence of a
common corporate culture, denser social interactions and more intense
knowledge circulation within a single firm.
4.2. Dynamics of interpersonal trust in coopetitive relationships
The emergence and subsequent development of interpersonal trust
in coopetitive interactions tends to be influenced by sensemaking pro-
cesses, that is, the ways in which individuals interpret their coopetitive
experience and ascribe various meanings to complex situations occur-
ring at the interface between cooperation and competition.
2
When comparing the findings on trust in the coopetitive and non-competi-
tive environment, it should be kept in mind that research on interpersonal and
intergroup trusting relationships among individuals that belong to different
non-competing organizations involved in collaborative projects remains rela-
tively scant. Despite the abundance of studies of interpersonal trusting attitudes
developed within a single organization, we still know relatively little about the
origins, dynamics and effects of trust that arises at the interpersonal and in-
tergroup level in the context of interorganizational collaboration between non-
rival firms. Given the insufficiency of relevant studies, we may expect the in-
congruence between the outcomes of studying trust in competitive and non-
competitive collaboration. Taking this limitation into account, in the present
and following sections on interpersonal and intergroup trust we use the results
of all studies currently available in the organization and management literature,
which examine the phenomena of interpersonal and intergroup trust arising in
the context of collaboration between competing and non-competing organiza-
tions alike.
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Industrial Marketing Management 84 (2020) 2–18
Sensemaking processes should be distinguished from cognitive eva-
luation: the latter does not imply that individuals construct their
identity or give specific meaning to their collective experience. The
connection between changes in the levels of perceived interpersonal
trust and shifts in the types of sensemaking in coopetitive settings has
been witnessed by Lundgren-Henriksson and Kock (2016). They have
studied the sequential phases of a coopetitive strategic change initiative
launched by three organizations in the Finnish media industry in re-
sponse to declining revenues from traditional print media and the
growing significance of digital news and advertising. While these or-
ganizations were vigorously competing for readers and advertising
revenues, striving to maintain their historical identities, the three
newspapers also started cooperating with each other through ex-
changing some materials, to be able to focus on their competitive ad-
vantage areas and avoid unnecessary expenses incurred in less im-
portant spheres.
When the new strategy of cooperating with rivals confronted diffi-
culties and got stalled at the implementation stage, managers re-
sponded with two diametrically opposed sensemaking approaches. The
first mode adopted an active stance towards carrying out the coopeti-
tive strategy. The managers acknowledged resistance to strategic
change, stating that it will take time before staff in all three newspapers
elaborate new routines, learn to cooperate and develop trusting re-
lationships with their colleagues from rival publishing companies
thanks to more intense professional interactions and social exchange.
The second mode of managerial sensemaking suggested that a major
change in the industry's competitive patterns had already occurred, and
fierce competition in newsrooms had given way to growing collabora-
tion within the media network. As a result, these managers painted a
much more positive image of their counterparts in other organizations,
amplifying their cooperative intent in changed industrial circum-
stances, which implied much stronger levels of interpersonal trust.
Thus, the alternative sets of sensemaking interpretations were asso-
ciated with different perceptions of coopetition and very dissimilar
views of the evolution of interpersonal trusting relationships in this
coopetitive setting.
The importance of individuals' sensemaking assumptions to the
evolution of interpersonal trust in coopetition is also corroborated by
Raza-Ullah et al. (2014). They found that, in the dynamic context,
employees of a firm involved in a coopetitive relationship exhibited
positive feelings towards their counterparts from a rival company,
thereby affirming their trust and collaborative intent, as they ac-
knowledged the growing interdependence of both organizations, which
required close cooperation in technology and product development. At
the same time, individuals engaged in coopetitive collaboration can
experience both positive and negative interdependencies, which entail
opposite behaviors based on growing feelings of trust or increasing
attitudes of distrust (Ghobadi & D’Ambra, 2011). Therefore, the re-
lationship between mutual interdependencies and the dynamics of in-
terpersonal trust in cooperative/competitive structures becomes more
complex, reflecting the differences in employees' personality traits,
prior cooperative experience and collaborative reward structures
(Beersma et al., 2003; Beersma et al., 2009). Note that in this paper, the
term ‘structure’ implies two different meanings: structure of coopetitive
relationships (that is, the balance of competitive and cooperative as-
pects of coopetition) and structure of a coopetitive environment (that is,
a range of external factors defining the conditions of coopetitive col-
laboration).
Based on the outcomes of the above studies, we can name the two
salient factors that affect the development of interpersonal trust in
coopetition: (1) sensemaking efforts made by the employees of com-
peting firms and (2) managerial representations of coopetitive dy-
namics observed in collaboration with rivals. These findings reveal
important similarities between the evolutionary patterns of inter-
personal trust in coopetitive and non-competitive settings. The latter
environment is also characterized by the substantial impact of the
A. Lascaux
sensemaking and identity formation processes on the dynamics of trust
observed between individuals (Adobor, 2005; Beech & Huxham, 2003;
Lewicki, Tomlinson, & Gillespie, 2006). The attribution, adoption and
transformation of employees' mental frames can be indeed triggered by
certain managerial actions, in particular through the exchange of po-
sitive relational signals, the establishment of clear and explicit ex-
pectations and the use of constructive voice in collaboration (Six, 2007;
Six, Nooteboom, & Hoogendoorn, 2010; Six & Skinner, 2010). Yet in
general, studies of non-competitive interpersonal trust dynamics point
to a wider list of parameters affecting the development of trusting at-
titudes, such as individuals' disposition to trust, perceived trust-
worthiness of the other party and structural factors governing the in-
terpersonal relationship (Colquitt, Scott, & LePine, 2007; Ferrin &
Dirks, 2003; Lewicki et al., 2006). This incongruence between findings
on the evolution of interpersonal trust in coopetitive and non-compe-
titive environment calls for further investigation of the effects of
characteristic qualities of the trustor, trustee and the relationship be-
tween the parties on the dynamics of trust between individuals involved
in coopetitive interactions.
An important question not addressed in these studies concerns the
ability of organizational leaders to affect the dynamics of interpersonal
trust arising among the employees of the companies involved in coo-
petition through guiding their sensemaking activities. This line of in-
vestigation could shed light on whether managers of competing/co-
operating firms are able to accelerate trust development among the
individuals belonging to rival organizations by deliberately re-
presenting a coopetitive situation in a more favorable way, for example,
by stressing the mutual benefits derived from coopetitive interactions
with the partners. An exploration of potential links between the ad-
vancement of trust and the unfolding of sensemaking perspectives must
be left, however, to future studies.
4.3. Outcomes of interpersonal trust in coopetitive relationships
Extant studies (e.g., Fernandez & Chiambaretto, 2016; Fernandez,
Ji, & Yami, 2014; Le Roy & Fernandez, 2015) suggest that the positive
effects of trust between individuals in a coopetitive environment lie,
first, in mitigating potential conflicts and smoothing frictions that may
arise as a result of interunit or interfirm coopetition, and second, in
generating positive behavioral and performance outcomes in coopeti-
tive teams. In general, interpersonal trust between managers is deemed
necessary to counterbalance elements of rivalry and achieve common
goals in coopetitive milieu (Czakon, Mucha-Kuś, & Rogalski, 2014;
Quintana-García & Benavides-Velasco, 2004; Tidström, 2014; Wang &
Krakover, 2008). More specifically, in the context of studying coope-
titive projects carried out in the satellite telecommunications industry,
trust between the project managers from competing firms is argued to
facilitate the management of intra-team tensions in collaboration (Le
Roy & Fernandez, 2015) through regulating communication flows and
maintaining the balance between sharing and protecting sensitive
technical knowledge (Fernandez, Ji, & Yami, 2014) or agreeing to
sustain the confidentiality of information and prevent its further dis-
semination in case it was accidentally revealed by unsuspecting team
members (Fernandez & Chiambaretto, 2016).
With regard to personality traits, trust experienced on the inter-
personal level is associated with agreeableness (the ability to care about
others), and this individual predisposition is shown to increase the
propensity to cooperate in coopetitive business projects (Geraudel &
Salvetat, 2014). More complex models investigating behavioral and
performance implications of interpersonal trust demonstrate that
trusting relationships between individuals have a beneficial impact on
both process and outcome dimensions of coopetitive interactions. In
their study of coopetitive patterns in the joint projects undertaken by
information technology organizations in Taiwan, Lin, Wang, Tsai, and
Hsu (2010) have found perceived trust among members of virtual teams
to be positively related to perceived job effectiveness in virtual team
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Industrial Marketing Management 84 (2020) 2–18
collaboration and interpersonal knowledge sharing across team mem-
bers through the mediating influence of intra-team cooperative atti-
tude. These authors therefore recommend that project managers set up
informal meetings among participants at the early stages of their virtual
collaboration with an aim to quickly establish interpersonal trust and
promote intragroup cooperation. In the same industry setting, Baruch
and Lin (2012) have found that a virtual team's social capital based on
interpersonal trust among team members contributes to enhanced team
knowledge sharing and team performance in coopetitive projects.
Overall, we can state that interpersonal trust positively affects (1) a
climate of cooperation between rivals, (2) knowledge sharing among
the employees from competing firms or units and (3) collaborative
project performance. These results are paralleled by the similar findings
on the effects of interpersonal trust in non-competitive organizational
collaboration. Trust between individuals has been found to be posi-
tively associated with the effectiveness of cross-functional and virtual
team collaboration (Massey & Kyriazis, 2007; Muethel, Siedbrat, &
Hoegl, 2012; Paul & McDaniel Jr, 2004), successful completion of
outsourcing projects (Qi & Chau, 2013) and organizational citizenship
behavior (Singh & Srivastava, 2009). Yet, in a marked contrast with
studies on trust in coopetition, interpersonal trust has not been identi-
fied as a factor influencing the willingness to share knowledge between
individuals working in a non-competitive setting (Ding et al., 2007).
The origins of this discrepancy are to be investigated in future research
on the effects of interpersonal trust. One possible explanation of why
interpersonal trust prompts knowledge sharing in coopetitive, but not
in non-competitive relationships, may be that in collaboration with
rivals individuals have to reach some threshold level of interpersonal
trust prior to deciding on whether to share important knowledge, which
can be used by their counterparts for private (and, probably, adverse)
purposes.
In their discussion of various opportunities for reducing coopetitive
tensions in interfirm projects, Fernandez and Chiambaretto (2016) have
supposed that interpersonal trust between the project managers could
result in the emergence of informal control mechanisms capable of
curbing excess knowledge transfer between competing firms. Whether
trust among individuals can actually lead to the development of the
instruments of informal control in the coopetitive realm remains an
intriguing question which needs to be clarified in future research.
5. Coopetition and trust on the intergroup level
The term ‘intergroup level’ used in this study concerns coopetitive
interactions between various functional units or divisions belonging to
the same firm, as well as interrelationships between project teams or
task groups that belong to different organizations engaged in coopeti-
tive market activities. We treat intrafirm and interfirm group-level
coopetitive collaboration together because of the close similarity of the
antecedents, developmental processes and outcomes of trust in both
types of intergroup interactions (Brahm & Kunze, 2012; Chang, Chuang,
& Chao, 2011; Gilson, Maynard, Young, Vartiainen, & Hakonen, 2015;
Newell, David, & Chand, 2007; Ratcheva & Vyakarnam, 2001; Robert
Jr, Dennis, & Hung, 2009; Staples & Webster, 2008; Tsai & Ghoshal,
1998).
5.1. Antecedents of intergroup trust in coopetitive interactions
Extant studies (Seran et al., 2016; Tsai, 2002) point out that the
origins of intergroup trust can be understood in connection with the
need of knowledge sharing between competing intrafirm units. Those
units are interested in learning from each other in order to stay ahead of
rivals under conditions of similarity in their market situations and re-
source constraints (Tsai, 2002). Transmitting and receiving knowledge
across intrafirm boundaries may bring synergistic benefits to all units
involved, but attaining these benefits requires complex collaboration
among competing groups (Bendig, Enke, Thieme, & Brettel, 2018;
A. Lascaux
Ghobadi & D’Ambra, 2012). Therefore, efforts at sharing knowledge
should be embedded in dense social interactions that coordinate in-
formation exchange and create interunit trust. In general, social inter-
action is found to be slightly more conducive to knowledge sharing
among competing intrafirm units relative to their non-competing
counterparts (Tsai, 2002). This suggests that knowledge exchange
among the organizational units that combine cooperation with internal
competition demands the creation of informal coordination mechan-
isms that foster intergroup trust. In a similar vein, Seran et al. (2016)
observe that the requirements of resource and knowledge sharing
across the organizational units involved in coopetition prompt them to
adopt informal management practices aiming at the development of
social networks and trust among competing/collaborating units.
Summing up these studies, we can identify the following drivers of
intergroup trust in coopetition: (1) the initiation of intergroup knowl-
edge transfer and (2) the deliberate arrangement of integrative social
interactions across competing units. These results demonstrate im-
portant similarities with the findings obtained from non-competitive
intergroup collaboration. For example, Newell et al. (2007) have con-
cluded that trust-building among globally distributed IT work teams
requires project managers to actively work on relationship management
through providing integrative communication, establishing a common
culture and promoting a strong feeling of community across the teams.
Yet studies of non-competing groups specify some additional ante-
cedents of intergroup trust that have no parallels in the current coo-
petition literature. Ferrin, Bligh, and Kohles (2007), for instance, put
forward a proposition that the other group's cooperative behavior has a
relatively strong effect on the focal group's trust only when the focal
group is able to monitor its partner's actions. Beyond that, the level of
trust observed in various intergroup interactions has been shown to be
affected by the group decision-making mechanisms and reciprocity
expectations (Song, 2006, 2008, 2009). It remains to be seen in future
studies whether intergroup trust in coopetition is also driven by the
monitoring options available to the parties, the specific decision-
making rules adopted by groups or their expectations of partners' re-
ciprocal behavior. The last point, which concerns expectations of re-
ciprocity, may have particular significance in the context of coopeti-
tion, because, in general, reciprocal trust between collaborating parties
and their confidence in honoring mutual commitments lead to en-
hanced cooperation between rivals (Lado et al., 1997; Seran et al.,
2016).
An important research issue for further investigation concerns the
possible existence of an effect of trust on knowledge sharing, when
highly developed intergroup trust amplifies knowledge transfer be-
tween competing intrafirm units, thereby forming a feedback loop that
steadily increases those units' knowledge stock and enhances their
competitive advantage.
5.2. Dynamics of intergroup trust in coopetitive interactions
Research on the dynamic aspects of intergroup trust reveals the
evolutionary nature of trusting attitudes adopted towards coopetitors.
The observed temporal patterns suggest that trust gradually strengthens
in the interactions between competing/cooperating groups or units,
paralleled by the development of formal procedures and regulations
aimed at defusing tensions occurring in coopetitive settings
(Damayanti, Scott, & Ruhanen, 2017; Le Roy & Fernandez, 2015). In
their study of coopetitive projects arranged within large multiunit
French banks, Seran et al. (2016) posit that formal integration instru-
ments (selection and deployment of project teams, official meetings, HR
procedures) encourage interunit informal coordination and social in-
teractions that foster the emergence and subsequent development of
trust among the bank units and interunit project groups. These authors
have also reached a conclusion that time represents a critical factor in
reaching compromises and maintaining a fair balance of power among
coopetitors, as relational trust gradually emerges in repeated interunit
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Industrial Marketing Management 84 (2020) 2–18
interactions that help bring together mutual expectations and devise
efficient collaborative routines. There is, however, a flip side to this
gradual reinforcement of trust in the repeated intergroup contacts.
When cross-unit interactions and informal exchanges promoting mutual
trust occur in coopetitive projects aimed at producing radical innova-
tion, an increasing intensity of trust-based cooperation may negatively
affect the partnership, limiting the creativity of the jointly developed
ideas (Strese, Meuer, Flatten, & Brettel, 2016b).
In general, we observe that the temporal dynamics of intergroup
trust is influenced by (1) the formal regulations lowering interunit
coopetitive tensions and (2) informal social exchanges sustained across
competing groups. The second result accords with the findings on the
evolution of intergroup trust in a non-competitive environment, where
trust and cooperation are found to mutually reinforce each other over
time, and this spiraling development is fundamentally affected by
partners' initial moves and reciprocity expectations (Ferrin et al., 2008;
Song, 2009). At the same time, studies of intergroup trust in non-
competitive collaboration reveal that trust levels do not necessarily rise
over time as groups gain experience of working with each other (Green,
2003). These variable patterns of trust development can be ascribed to
the evidence accumulated in previous relationships between groups,
degree of success or failure in the interunit project, perceived fairness of
risk-rewards structure and changes in the composition of senior man-
agement team. Whether and how these factors affect the evolution of
intergroup trust in coopetitive settings remains to be established in
further research.
In future studies, it would be interesting to explore whether inter-
group trust displays the markedly different characteristics, such as
being based on calculative reasons or accumulated knowledge (Lewicki
& Bunker, 1995, 1996), at diverse stages of coopetition development.
For example, we might suppose dissimilarity in the manifestations of
trust at various phases of intergroup coopetitive projects, such as in-
itiation, implementation or subsequent revision of project design. A
related question refers to whether formal managerial structures reg-
ulating coopetitive interactions differentially affect intergroup trust at
various points of its evolutionary history.
5.3. Outcomes of intergroup trust in coopetitive interactions
Prior research has shown that intergroup trust positively affects
both cross-functional coopetitive performance and the cross-functional
generation of radical innovations (Strese et al., 2016b; Strese, Meuer,
Flatten, & Brettel, 2016a). Analyzing survey data from 234 German
companies, Strese et al. (2016a) have concluded that a considerate
leadership style of department leaders, which is based on previously
established mutual trust, respect of ideas and concern about team
members' well-being, promotes information flows within and between
coopetitive teams. In the presence of trust, group members freely ex-
press their views and openly exchange valuable knowledge, hence im-
proving the quality and quantity of interaction and enhancing the in-
tensity of cross-team cooperation. Beyond cooperative intensity, cross-
functional cooperative ability also expands as a result of creative de-
cision making and innovative problem-solving efforts. At the same time,
considerate leadership promotes healthy competition between depart-
ments through driving conflict resolution skills and helping find com-
promise solutions to disputes over resource distribution. Therefore,
considerate leadership that rests upon in-group and between-group
trusting relationships positively influences both competition and co-
operation across organizational functions.
Empirical studies have also established a positive link between in-
tergroup trust and radical innovation devised in cross-functional coo-
petition. For instance, Strese et al. (2016b) have found such an effect of
trust-based interactions through analyzing survey data obtained from
392 department heads and project leaders of new product development
teams. Radical innovation flourishes as interunit cooperative activities
foster mutual trust, which enables more intense learning, information
A. Lascaux
processing and knowledge recombination, while cross-functional com-
petitive interactions increase units' agility and inspire their search for
truly innovative solutions to keep abreast of competition. Trustful re-
lationships are particularly helpful in facilitating cross-functional
transfer of complex and tacit knowledge, an important prerequisite for
radical innovation, therefore indirectly contributing to the enhance-
ment of radical innovation performance in the functional units involved
in coopetition.
Contrariwise, distrust hinders knowledge sharing and obstructs ef-
fective knowledge recombination between units, groups or project
teams in a coopetitive environment. An empirical study of a colla-
borative defense project aimed at creating an integrated, flexible solu-
tion through combining the competences of five competing firms from
different European countries (Enberg, 2012) demonstrates how the
absence of trust impairs intergroup coordination in knowledge-in-
tensive activities. Due to initial secrecy and distrust, caused by national
security issues, the presence of corporate confidential information and
each firm's competitive intent to advance its own economic interests,
participants have reduced their cooperation to restricted and for-
malized knowledge exchange, which impeded subsequent knowledge
integration. Groups originating from different companies couldn't un-
derstand each other's processes, technologies or tools due to restraints
on the content of their communication. Therefore, they were unable to
solve incommensurability between disparate results achieved in the
coopetitive project. A low level of trust between participants brought
about a purely formal way to integrate knowledge among various
project groups, which had to focus on standardized protocols, outputs
and deliverables of their collaboration rather than origins of their
products and methods used to resolve the problems with their com-
patibility. Distrust thereby resulted in retarded knowledge transfer
across the groups, which led to different interpretations, mis-
understandings and the loss of common ground in the project.
Hence, the extant studies of coopetition point to the following ef-
fects of intergroup trust: (1) improved cross-department coopetitive
performance, (2) better chances for creating cross-functional radical
innovation and (3) enhanced coordination of intergroup knowledge-
creating activities. Concerning the third effect, there exist similarities
with the impact of intergroup trust in non-competitive settings: in the
context of cross-team virtual collaboration, Peters and Manz (2007)
point out that trust improves shared understanding of tasks, roles, re-
sponsibilities and specific expertise among geographically dispersed
teams. Yet findings on intergroup trust in a non-competitive environ-
ment also highlight important differences in the outcomes of trusting
attitudes held at the group level. Trust formed between interacting
teams has been found to predict the team's subsequent risk-taking be-
havior towards the other team (Serva, Fuller, & Mayer, 2005), while
low task interdependence between collaborating teams has been shown
to amplify a positive correlation between trust and knowledge sharing
(Staples & Webster, 2008). More studies are needed to understand
whether these additional impacts and qualifying factors of intergroup
trust are also relevant to the situations of coopetitive collaboration. In
particular, it is possible that task interdependence between collabor-
ating groups substantially modifies the role of intergroup trust in coo-
petitive contexts, revealing important similarities with complex rela-
tional patterns observed between mutual interdependencies and the
dynamics of trust at the interpersonal level of coopetitive interaction
(Ghobadi & D’Ambra, 2011).
Referring to the above studies that have examined the links between
intergroup trust and types of innovation in coopetition, it should be
noted that Strese et al. (2016b) have been unable to confirm a positive
association between trust-based cross-functional coopetition and the
creation of incremental, rather than radical, innovative output. This
research outcome opens the perspective of exploring the differential
impact of trust on producing incremental and radical innovation in the
context of intergroup coopetitive activities.
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Industrial Marketing Management 84 (2020) 2–18
6. Coopetition and trust on the interorganizational level
Trusting relationships among the firms involved in coopetition have
so far attracted the most attention among the scholars examining the
different levels of trust in coopetitive settings. Following Zaheer et al.
(1998), p. 143, this paper defines interorganizational trust as ‘the extent
to which organizational members have a collectively-held trust or-
ientation toward the partner firm.’ Interorganizational (or interfirm)
trust therefore cannot be reduced to trust between the individuals be-
longing to competing/cooperating organizations, yet it derives from the
aggregation of the individuals' trusting attitudes and in turn affects and
shapes their interpersonal trust. Put differently, interpersonal and in-
terorganizational trust share the same origins, as both emanate from
individuals' expectations, but differ markedly in the objects of the in-
dividuals' positive feelings.
6.1. Antecedents of interorganizational trust in a coopetitive environment
In examining the sources of interorganizational trust in coopetition,
current studies have focused on such precursors of trust as (i) the in-
tegration of competitive and cooperative elements within a single in-
terorganizational relationship, (ii) the impact of cultural/institutional
factors and (iii) the role of structural aspects in coopetitive settings.
6.1.1. An integration of competition and cooperation
Somewhat paradoxically, a coopetitive situation in itself may con-
tain the seeds of future development of trust between coopetitors, since
partners in coopetition seek to amalgamate the competitive and co-
operative aspects of their relationship to increase its durability and
efficiency, and the attainment of this goal requires the establishment of
trust between organizations. Interfirm trust may become an important
intermediate outcome of coopetition enabling the partners to reach
other benefits of their collaborative project, such as product innovation,
resource sharing or a common financial gain (Bengtsson & Raza-Ullah,
2016; Broløs, 2009; Ketchen Jr, Snow, & Hoover, 2004). Growing in-
terorganizational trust in turn allows cooperation between rivals to
strengthen and expand even further (Lado et al., 1997). On an empirical
side, coopetition has been found to generate interorganizational trust as
part of rivals' cooperative experience in Italy's tourism clusters (Della
Corte & Aria, 2016), Australia's hotel industry (Ingram & Roberts, 2000)
and manufacturer-distributor supply chains in China (Li, Liu, & Liu,
2011). Undoubtedly, more empirical work is needed to properly un-
derstand the mechanisms through which rival firms' cooperative ac-
tivities may contribute to the creation and development of interpartner
trust.
6.1.2. Culture and institutions
Researchers argue that differences in national and organizational
culture have a profound impact on the development of interfirm trust in
coopetition. Following this line of reasoning, Chen and Miller (2015)
propose that in order to preserve mutual trust firms from Eastern
(collectivist) cultures engage in less confrontational and more con-
ciliatory competitive practices than their counterparts in Western (in-
dividualistic) cultures. Firms in the East also seek compromise and
display consistency in behavior across various interactional contexts to
build trusting, more symbiotic and more enduring relationships, which
are highly valued by other actors within this cultural environment. In a
similar vein, Baglieri et al. (2008) put forward the argument that cross-
cultural and cross-national differences affect coopetition through var-
iations in the propensity to build interpartner trust. At the same time,
organizational culture is also considered an important factor influen-
cing interfirm trust and consequently the ability to achieve an organi-
zational fit in cooperative relationships between competitors (Klimas,
2016). While these arguments still remain theoretical assumptions, they
need to be corroborated in future empirical studies, which can in-
vestigate the specific forms in which cultural affinity or dissimilarity
A. Lascaux
may foster or impede interorganizational trust between coopetitors.
6.1.3. Structure of coopetition
Recall that in this paper's context, the term ‘structure of coopetition’
denotes two different objects: structure of coopetitive relationships and
structure of a coopetitive environment. Research on the first structural
aspect suggests that variation in the levels of interorganizational trust
reflects changes in the relative weight of competitive and cooperative
elements observed in different types of coopetitive interactions. For
example, Bengtsson et al. (2010) propose that the combinations of weak
cooperation and weak (or strong) competition in a coopetitive re-
lationship entail low levels of interpartner trust, which would impede
knowledge exchange and the search for resource complementarities
between coopetitors. Conversely, a mix of strong cooperation and
strong (or weak) competition is argued to result in high levels of in-
terfirm trust, ushering in opportunities to explore complementarities
and share knowledge between the partners. Therefore, the strength of
interfirm trusting relationships is supposed to be shaped by the specific
configurations of coopetitive interactions. In a similar fashion, Luo
(2007) offers a typology of coopetition among global players, in which
contending coopetitive situation (when the firm maintains high com-
petition and low cooperation with its counterpart) is associated with
weak interorganizational trust, while partnering situation (high co-
operation and low competition between two global rivals) corresponds
to an elevated level of interfirm trust, paving the way for enhanced
reciprocal learning and the successful attainment of collaborative goals.
An empirical verification of Luo's framework based on examining
coopetitive relationships between manufacturers and distributors in
China's home appliance industry (Liu, Luo, Yang, & Maksimov, 2014)
confirms that these partnerships form distinct patterns, depending upon
the relative strength of competitive and cooperative elements in dyadic
relationships, and various types of coopetitive orientation differentially
relate to interfirm trust. Yet more is to be done in the future to explore
the specific effects that diverse imbalances in competitive/cooperative
dimensions in coopetition may exert on the emergence and dynamics of
interorganizational trust between coopetitors.
The second structural facet, which refers to the configuration of a
coopetitive environment, concerns various external conditions that in-
fluence the development of interorganizational trust between rival
firms involved in cooperative projects. This environmental aspect
comprises the structures of contractual governance, collective decision-
making, industrial relations and spatial location among coopetitors.
With regard to the governance structures, trust is called for when key
account buyers want to strike the proper balance between the trans-
actional, price-focused mechanism regulating their vertical coopetitive
relationships with strategic suppliers/vendors and the relational ap-
proach stressing the long-term cooperative perspective and mutual re-
liance in collaboration with the partners (Eriksson, 2008a, 2008b;
Lacoste, 2012, 2014; Wiener & Saunders, 2014; Wilhelm, 2011;
Wilhelm & Kohlbacher, 2011). The introduction of third actors playing
intermediation roles in the decision-making process also encourages
interpartner trust through facilitating and structuring interactions be-
tween coopetitors (Fernandez, Le Roy, & Gnyawali, 2014; Salvetat &
Géraudel, 2012). Patterns of industrial dynamics characterized by de-
clining (or increasing) intensity of competition may also invoke (or
inhibit) interorganizational trust in the coopetitive milieu (Pellegrin-
Boucher et al., 2013). Finally, the development of interfirm trust is
argued to be affected by the geographical proximity between coopeti-
tors (Le Roy, Robert, & Lasch, 2016; Von Friedrichs Grängsjö &
Gummesson, 2006). However, on the last point studies have reached
controversial results: while Le Roy, Robert, and Lasch (2016) contend
that increasing geographical distance diminishes competitive orienta-
tion in coopetition and therefore leads to a higher propensity to develop
trust, Von Friedrichs Grängsjö and Gummesson (2006) state that it is
the physical proximity between competing/cooperating firms which
provides the basis for a high-trust culture. These inconsistent findings
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Industrial Marketing Management 84 (2020) 2–18
need to be reconciled in further research, along with investigating the
impact of other structural parameters, such as firm size, age or industry
affiliation, on the emergence and advancement of interorganizational
trust in coopetition.
Drawing on the outcomes of available studies, we can list the fol-
lowing antecedents of interorganizational trust in dyadic coopetition:
(1) the search for balancing the competitive and cooperative elements
of interfirm relationships, (2) cultural and institutional influences, (3)
the relative strength of competitive/cooperative orientation in interfirm
collaboration occurring in different contractual, industrial and geo-
graphic settings. These findings reveal some commonality with the re-
sults obtained in a non-competitive environment: for instance,
Bachmann and Inkpen (2011) and Marchington and Vincent (2004)
emphasize the role of institutions in promoting interorganizational
trust. Beyond these similarities, however, studies of non-rival colla-
boration point to important differences in the antecedents of interfirm
trust, such as the influence of relational embeddedness developed be-
tween organizations (Chen, Lin, & Yen, 2014), the impact of various
interpretations of partner behavior (Vlaar, Van den Bosch, & Volberda,
2007) and the expectations of continuity of the relationship (Poppo
et al., 2008). Future studies can establish whether these factors are also
relevant to the emergence of interorganizational trust in coopetitive
situations. Particular attention should be paid to dissimilarity of inter-
pretations of partner behavior in coopetitive contexts, in line with the
findings by Vlaar et al. (2007) on non-competing organizations, since
these sensemaking activities performed at the interorganizational level
have clear parallels with similar processes observed at the individual
and group level of coopetition (Lundgren-Henriksson & Kock, 2016;
Raza-Ullah et al., 2014).
6.2. Dynamics of interorganizational trust in a coopetitive environment
Studies inspired by a process perspective on interorganizational
trust deal with two different types of dynamic changes observed in a
coopetitive environment. The first alternative implies that although
coopetitive projects undertaken by partner organizations pass through
various stages, which can alter the specifics of coopetitive interactions,
the level of interpartner trust remains relatively high and stable during
the whole collaboration period, thereby enabling a smooth advance-
ment of cooperation between rivals. Put it differently, as coopetitive
projects evolve, interorganizational trust acts as an anchor stabilizing
the development of interfirm collaboration. As an illustration of such a
steady cooperative trajectory, Bengtsson and Kock (2000) refer to the
experience of two rival Swedish firms engaged in a joint R&D project.
Since partners maintained a high level of mutual trust, both firms
openly shared information about their individual development pro-
cesses, used each other's laboratories and co-financed their develop-
ment programs. Trust-based cooperative interactions accompanied all
stages of the joint technology development project right up to the
product development phase, wherein the collaborative aspect of the
interfirm relationship had to give way to the competing market inter-
ests of participating firms.
The second type of evolutionary processes determining the dy-
namics of interfirm trusting relationships in coopetitive settings reflects
changes in the level of interpartner trust occurring as a result of dif-
ferent approaches to advancing cooperative relationships between rival
firms. In this context, Dahl (2014) conceptualizes the sources of po-
tential change in coopetitive interactions and characteristics of inter-
organizational trust in accordance with new experience accumulated by
competitors from mutual cooperation and from their external en-
vironment. In the first scenario, changes in coopetitive patterns arise
primarily from absorbing environmental signals, which implies that the
evolving relationship is dominated by competitive tensions and low
trust. The second scenario assumes that changes in coopetitive inter-
action modes are mainly caused by interorganizational learning pro-
cesses, which stresses the developmental perspective of interfirm
A. Lascaux
cooperation, commitment, knowledge sharing and high trust. Finally,
the third scenario suggests that firms adjust their coopetitive goals
under the joint influence of acquired relational experience and external
environmental changes, attesting to the moderate levels of mutual trust
and balanced competitive/cooperative forces in the evolving coopeti-
tive relationship. This latter perspective has found tentative support in
the recent studies of coopetitive dynamics, which point to substantial
changes in the level of interorganizational trust caused by the partner's
behavior in a collaborative project (Rajala & Tidström, 2017) or di-
vergent cultural orientations observed among coopetitors (Vanyushyn,
Bengtsson, Näsholm, & Boter, 2018). Future empirical tests of the above
framework would certainly enrich our understanding of inter-
organizational trust dynamics in the coopetitive milieu.
Overall, studies of interorganizational trust dynamics in a coopeti-
tive environment reveal two perspectives on the evolution of interfirm
trusting attitudes: (1) trust remains steadily high as coopetitive colla-
boration progresses through a sequence of stages and (2) the level of
trust changes in accordance with detected environmental signals and
accumulated relational experience. The evolution of interorganizational
trust in non-competitive settings shows commonalities with the second
of these developmental patterns, with past research arguing that the
advancement of interfirm trust is determined by the degree of depen-
dence between the partners and the prior establishment of cooperative
agreements and a sense of shared identity (Janowicz-Panjaitan &
Krishnan, 2009; Kasper-Fuehrer & Ashkanasy, 2001). At the same time,
studies of non-rival collaborative interactions indicate that the tem-
poral dynamics of trust in interorganizational settings are also affected
by the length of the partnership and its embeddedness in the wider set
of economic relationships (Ekici, 2013), the extent to which relation-
ships are reinforced by formal contracts (MacDuffie, 2011) and re-
source and routine rigidities that may arise in collaboration (Thorgren
& Wincent, 2011). Future studies of trust in coopetitive settings may
help clarify the potential links between the above parameters and the
development of interorganizational trust.
6.3. Outcomes of interorganizational trust in a coopetitive environment
Extant literature (e.g., Eriksson, 2008a, 2008b; Park et al., 2014;
Wu, 2014) discriminates between the effects of interorganizational trust
on (i) relational, (ii) innovation and (iii) performance outcomes of
coopetitive interactions.
6.3.1. Relational outcomes
Studies point to a variety of relational effects stemming from the
existence of interfirm trust in coopetitive interactions, both positive,
such as satisfaction with the relationship and an inclination to continue
collaborative activities, and negative, such as relationship stickiness.
For instance, trust-building processes based on the cost-benefit analysis,
reputational signals and the emotional bonds forged between the
partners prompt competing firms to maintain collaborative relation-
ships, assuaging their concerns about cooperation with rivals (Czernek
& Czakon, 2016). Moreover, the development of trust in a coopetitive
project, facilitated by the active use of collaborative tools, such as joint
objectives, teambuilding activities and dispute resolution techniques,
allows the partners to rely more on the relational norms of cooperation
than on the formal contracts (Eriksson, 2008a, 2008b). At the same
time, excess interorganizational trust in coopetition can lead to mis-
perceiving the objectives of rival firms and underestimating their
competitive intent, which would result in the disappointment over the
dynamics of the coopetitive relationship, including changes in the re-
lative power of coopetitors (Akpinar & Vincze, 2016). Quite pre-
dictably, a lack of trust blocks cooperation among potential partners, as
coopetitors feel themselves vulnerable to their counterparts' opportu-
nistic attempts to take advantage of their internal weaknesses (Lydeka
& Adomavičius, 2007).
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Industrial Marketing Management 84 (2020) 2–18
6.3.2. Innovation results
Interorganizational trust can exert positive influence on the two
dimensions of innovation activities in coopetitive projects: (a) innova-
tion output, (b) learning and knowledge sharing among coopetitors.
With respect to producing innovation in coopetitive settings, the in-
tensity of trust-based cooperation between a focal firm and its partners
in coopetitive knowledge-intensive alliances is shown to be positively
related to the focal firm's ability to generate technological innovations,
as trust facilitates knowledge sharing and transfer between coopetitors,
and quells the fears of partners' opportunism (Park et al., 2014).
Drawing on an empirical study in the medical device industry,
Bouncken, Clauss, and Fredrich (2016) have demonstrated that rela-
tional governance, which is based on mutual trust, commitment and
expectations of common benefits derived from collaboration, has a
positive interaction effect with coopetition on product innovativeness
in vertical interfirm alliances, and that the same innovative outcome
can be achieved through combining relational and transactional (con-
tract-based) modes of governance. On a more conceptual level, trust in
the other party's ability and goodwill is proposed to be a key determi-
nant of innovation success, complementing the formal contractual fra-
mework in the context of managing coopetitive service innovation
(Ritala et al., 2009). In a theoretical model suggested by Yami and
Nemeh (2014), trust-based social capital mediates tensions between
value creation and value appropriation in dyadic coopetition, thus en-
abling the attainment of incremental innovation outcomes in a coope-
titive partnership. At the same time, the positive effect of trust has its
limits: Wu (2014) has found empirical support for the assertion that
trust-based cooperation with competitors has an inverted U-shaped
relationship with a focal firm's product innovation performance, as trust
and cooperation initially facilitate knowledge exchange and acquisi-
tion, but their excessive levels in collaboration with rivals entail sub-
stantial risks of opportunistic exploitation by unscrupulous partners.
Concerning interfirm knowledge exchange in coopetition, Cheng,
Yeh, and Tu (2008) have established that trust has a positive impact on
interorganizational knowledge sharing in coopetitive supply chains,
and that the more a certain factor enhances trust (such as participation
and communication) or diminishes it (such as opportunistic behavior),
the bigger its corresponding influence on knowledge sharing. Ho and
Ganesan (2013) have found tentative support for the proposition that in
triadic partnerships held between the customer firm and the com-
peting/collaborating suppliers, the customer's efforts at nurturing trust
and encouraging the suppliers' cooperation result in improved knowl-
edge sharing among the suppliers and the alleviation of their concerns
over the partners' opportunistic misappropriation of their valuable
know-how. Contrariwise, mistrust among coopetitors impedes cross-
organizational knowledge exchange and obstructs access to sensitive
information in a technological partnership (Salvetat et al., 2013).
6.3.3. Performance implications
Various authors indicate that interfirm trust has a beneficial impact
on performance in coopetition. Olander, Hurmelinna-Laukkanen,
Blomqvist, and Ritala (2010) have demonstrated that trust performs a
crucial role in coopetitive buyer-supplier R&D collaboration, taking on
particular importance, relative to contractual governance mechanisms,
in the initial, explorative phase of the collaborative project. Park and
Russo (1996) have found that the failure rates of joint ventures laun-
ched by the firms competing in the broader market decrease if partners
are connected by multiple concurrent linkages, which signify an ad-
vanced level of interpartner trust and commitment. Interfirm trust has
been also shown to moderate the relationship between alliance gov-
ernance and coopetition: under conditions of high interorganizational
trust and low dependency on other firms, a centralized alliance func-
tion, which governs and controls coopetitive interactions, has a lesser
influence on coopetitive outcomes compared to a situation of low trust
and high dependency (Bouncken & Fredrich, 2012).
The positive effect of trust on performance has been confirmed in a
A. Lascaux
wide variety of geographic and industry contexts. In a survey of 647
small firms in Turkey, Morris et al. (2007) have shown trust, coupled
with commitment and mutual benefits, to be among the key factors
underlying the attainment of synergistic effects in coopetitive re-
lationships. Based on expert interviews in Hong Kong manufacturing
industries, Chin et al. (2008) have established the critical significance
of trust in maintaining a successful coopetition strategy. According to
Perks (2000), interfirm trust achieved in ICL and Fujitsu's coopetitive
collaboration brought about positive results, including the development
of joint projects beyond the scope of the initial interorganizational ar-
rangement. The high level of trust (complemented by a formal agree-
ment) also represented a critical factor enabling the smooth operation
of a coopetitive food service network (Osarenkhoe, 2010). Still, in the
studies on the outcomes of interorganizational trust in coopetitive
collaboration, it is often difficult to discriminate between the perfor-
mance effects of trust at the alliance and firm level. This important
aspect of interfirm trust in coopetition represents a fruitful area for
further empirical investigation.
In general, the reviewed studies indicate that interorganizational
trust in coopetition enhances: (1) partners' relational satisfaction, (2)
interfirm learning and product innovation performance and (3) the
attainment of the coopetitive project goals. These results appear to be in
sync with equally positive findings reported in the literature on non-
competitive interfirm cooperation, according to which interorganiza-
tional trust determines knowledge sharing across organizational bor-
ders (Janowicz-Panjaitan & Noorderhaven, 2009), decreases the trans-
action costs of interfirm collaboration (Laaksonen, Jarimo, & Kulmala,
2009) and enhances the performance of exchange relationships (Gulati
& Nickerson, 2008), particularly when firms develop specific informa-
tion-processing abilities that allow them to better assess partner trust-
worthiness (Carson, Madhok, Varman, & John, 2003). One study,
however, tells a more cautionary tale about the role of interorganiza-
tional trust in collaboration, stating that a combination of high initial
trust and low initial formal control subsequently leads to low levels of
interfirm knowledge transfer success (De Wael & Faems, 2011). Whe-
ther the same effect can be observed in coopetitive interactions remains
to be seen in future research.
7. Coopetition and trust on the inter-network level
Studies of inter-network trust in coopetition remain pretty scarce,
perhaps, not only due to the difficulties inherent in researching large,
loosely coupled entities, but also because of the serious problems with
developing or sustaining trustful relationships between dispersed sys-
tems populated by heterogeneous agents. Czakon and Czernek (2016),
for instance, have shown that trust-building processes in networks
differ from those in dyads and that trust-enabling mechanisms based on
assessing collaboration benefits, partners' capabilities and partners' in-
tent, which are commonly used in dyadic coopetition, do not work at
the network level owing to an increase in computational complexity
and information asymmetry regarding other players' interests, abilities
and motives. Still, despite these impediments, Mariani (2016) has ob-
served the presence and gradual rise of inter-network trust in coopeti-
tive interactions among several Italian tourism destinations jointly de-
veloping and marketing an event. Inspired by a strong leadership at
both individual and organizational levels, inter-network trust has be-
come instrumental in mitigating coopetitive tensions, coordinating
joint activities and maintaining stability in the repeated interactions
among networks. Moreover, trust has been argued to be important in all
stages of evolving inter-network coopetitive relationships, including
partnership design, partners' selection and partnership consolidation.
Likewise, in exploring coopetition among networks in a southern Po-
land tourism region, Czakon and Czernek (2016) have discovered the
positive influence of reputation and legitimation by a third party on the
establishment of trust on the network level and subsequently on the
firms' decision to enter into network coopetition. This research outcome
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Industrial Marketing Management 84 (2020) 2–18
could be generalized to inter-network trusting relationships, as actors in
both intra- and inter-network settings confront the same situation of
asymmetrically distributed information, lack of direct contacts and re-
liance on third-party knowledge in devising their coopetitive strategies.
At the same time, the apparently limited availability of studies on
network coopetition calls for further efforts at investigating potential
sources, dynamics and implications of inter-network trust in a coope-
titive environment.
Overall, extant studies show that inter-network trust (1) rests on
different foundations than interorganizational trust, (2) develops in
conjunction with the evolution of interpersonal trust within competing/
cooperating networks and (3) improves the outcomes of competitive
collaboration across networks. These findings have certain parallels in
the scholarly work on network trust in non-competitive settings, in
particular with regard to the necessity of developing interpersonal trust
in the relationships spanning global marketing networks (Kiessling &
Harvey, 2004) and the positive innovation effects of trust among net-
working firms (Mu, Peng, & Love, 2008). At the same time, studies on
cooperation in trust networks point to a number of determinants of
network trust, such as the type of collaborative relationships (Bülbül,
2013), the degree of interdependence between actors (Capaldo &
Giannoccaro, 2014) and the existence of community responsibility
norms (Cheshire & Cook, 2004), which have not been explored in the
context of coopetitive collaboration between networks. Given the
paucity of research on inter-network coopetition (Golnam et al., 2014;
Peng & Bourne, 2009; Wilhelm & Kohlbacher, 2011), further studies are
definitely needed to establish whether and how the above parameters
affect the development of trust in coopetitive network interactions.
That different levels of trust may coexist within a single coopetitive
framework (as evidenced, for instance, by the co-evolution of inter-
personal and inter-network trust in Mariani's (2016) case of coopetition
among Italian tourism destinations) attests to the potential similarity
that can be observed between the processes and mechanisms shaping
the interactional patterns in coopetition. At the same time, various
types of trusting attitudes reveal considerable differences in their ori-
gins, as demonstrated, for example, by examining interorganizational
and inter-network aspects of trust in network coopetition, which have
very dissimilar antecedents (Czakon & Czernek, 2016; Czernek &
Czakon, 2016). Similarities and differences exhibited across the levels
of trust highlight the importance of searching for a unifying perspective
on the nature of trusting relationships in coopetitive settings, which can
ultimately explain the common logic and the level-specific manifesta-
tions of trusting attitudes held among coopetitors.
8. The cross-level effects of trust in coopetition
Although the literature investigating how trust achieved at one level
of coopetitive interaction affects trusting attitudes at other levels re-
mains scarce, it indicates three major directions of cross-level effects of
trust in coopetitive settings. One group of studies highlights the impact
of interpersonal trust among individuals involved in coopetitive colla-
boration on the subsequent formation and strengthening of intergroup
trust. For example, in the context of a cooperative project embarked
upon by the two competing telecommunications companies, inter-
personal trust between the project managers from both firms has been
shown to be instrumental in facilitating the management of tensions
and spreading the climate of mutual trust among team members
(Fernandez, Ji, & Yami, 2014; Fernandez, Le Roy, & Gnyawali, 2014).
Likewise, interpersonal trust among directors and managers engaged in
coopetition within multi-unit banking organizations contributes to the
development of intergroup relational trust, which emerges from re-
peated interunit interactions at the personal and institutional levels
(Seran et al., 2016). In a similar way, Strese et al. (2016a, 2016b) point
out that interpersonal trust among employees participating in cross-
functional coopetition tends to foster interunit trust within an organi-
zation.
A. Lascaux
The second stream of coopetition research examines the connections
between interpersonal and interorganizational trust. For instance Raza-
Ullah et al. (2014) demonstrate that emotional ambivalence (that is, a
simultaneous sense of trust/distrust towards the partner) at the inter-
organizational level is nourished by conflicting emotions that elicit
interpersonal trust (or distrust) between individuals involved in coo-
petitive collaboration. Similarly, Ingram and Roberts (2000) show how
interpersonal trust experienced by hotel managers reinforces the links
of interorganizational trust and cooperation between competing hotels
in the Sydney hospitality industry.
Finally, Mariani (2016) has denoted the third dimension of cross-
level effects of trust in coopetition, which concerns the influence of
interpersonal trusting attitudes on the evolution of inter-network trust.
This study shows how personal trusting relationships between in-
dividuals in charge of major tourist attractions in Italy have proved
essential for the emergence of mutual trust and coordinated activities
between competing networks of event management organizations. In
line with his empirical observations, Mariani (2016) proposes a bottom-
up approach to multilevel studies of trust in coopetition, when mutual
trust developed between individuals engaged in coopetition is supposed
to affect coopetitive interactions at higher levels. It is noteworthy that
no studies to date have investigated the reverse, top-down influence of
higher-order trust (achieved at the intergroup, interorganizational or
inter-network level) on the development of interpersonal trusting atti-
tudes.
Research on the cross-level effects of trust in coopetition is to a
certain extent paralleled by the studies examining the nature of inter-
linkages between the different levels of trust in non-competitive orga-
nizational collaboration. Much akin to the previously discussed articles,
this scholarly work has also established that interpersonal trusting at-
titudes, which start with the boundary spanners as the key individuals
at the beginning of a new collaboration, gradually evolve into re-
lationships of interorganizational trust (Schilke & Cook, 2013) and that
the establishment of trust at the interorganizational level is affected by
the interpersonal processes of forming and assigning identities to the
individuals participating in a cooperative project (Beech & Huxham,
2003). Past research has also shown that trust perceptions play a crucial
mediating role in the development of cooperation in both interpersonal
and intergroup interactions (Ferrin et al., 2008) and that interpersonal
and interorganizational trust differentially affect negotiation costs and
the level of conflict in the exchange relationship (Zaheer et al., 1998).
Overall, however, we must conclude that the mutual influence of in-
terpersonal, intergroup and interorganizational trust remains in-
sufficiently explored in both coopetitive and non-competitive organi-
zational settings, indicating therefore a promising pathway to extend
our knowledge of the multilevel processes characterizing inter-
organizational collaboration.
9. Conclusion: Whither trust in coopetition?
The current paper offers a systematic, state-of-the-art account of the
significance of trust in the context of coopetitive interactions. The
contribution of this study to the organization and management litera-
ture is threefold. First, it summarizes the major outcomes of the con-
ceptual and empirical studies dedicated to examining the role of trust in
a coopetitive environment. Second, it identifies the main elements of a
multilevel, dynamic framework describing the origins, manifestations
and consequences of trust in coopetition (Fig. 1 depicts the main stages
and levels of the proposed model). Utilizing a multilevel approach, it
explores how trust is displayed on the interpersonal, intergroup, in-
terorganizational and inter-network level. It also applies a dynamic
perspective to studying trust among coopetitors by harnessing the
temporal dimension of trusting relationships and examining the ad-
vancement of trust along the antecedents-process-outcomes axis
(Czakon, Mucha-Kuś, & Rogalski, 2014; Dorn et al., 2016). Third, the
current paper outlines some avenues for future research on trust in
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Industrial Marketing Management 84 (2020) 2–18
coopetition through specifying a number of topics deserving further
investigation at different levels of analysis.
At the same time, we admit that exploration of mutual trust, which
represents one of the key features of coopetition (Czakon, Fernandez, &
Minà, 2014), remains noticeably incomplete. In expanding a research
agenda for trust in coopetitive settings, we can suggest a range of future
directions for scrutinizing various dimensions of trusting attitudes held
among coopetitors.
The first five directions stand in close connection with the five
challenging issues for future coopetition studies highlighted by
Bengtsson and Kock (2014). First, we need to better understand the
links between trusting relationships and the balancing of competitive/
cooperative elements in coopetition. Possible research questions in-
clude, but are not limited to, the following: (1) How does trust affect the
interface between competition and cooperation? (2) What are the
specifics of the evolution of trust under different coopetitive regimes in
which either a competitive or cooperative side prevails? (3) How do
various industry settings (e.g., knowledge-intensive industries) and
market contexts (e.g., high-tech products) modify the link between trust
and the competition/cooperation balance? (4) Is this link's position held
constant at different points in time which reflect the unfolding of
coopetitive relationships and/or a variety of trust development pat-
terns? (5) How is this link altered by changes in the strategic objectives
of one or several partners involved in coopetitive interactions?
Second, more light is to be shed on the ways in which trust helps
assuage tensions and contradictions immanent to coopetitive relation-
ships. Despite some progress achieved in explicating the role of trust in
managing paradoxes and tensions in coopetition (Tidström, 2014; Yami
& Nemeh, 2014), there is certainly a room for improving our grasp of
the underlying mechanisms through which trust may contribute to re-
ducing inevitable frictions between coopetitors. Issues of particular
interest here are the interplay between trust and value creation/value
appropriation concerns in coopetition, the connection between trust
and the knowledge sharing/knowledge retention dilemma experienced
by coopetitors and the dynamic and tense interrelationships between
trust and more formal coordinating mechanisms (contracts, monitoring
and control) that serve to abate tensions in coopetition. With regard to
the last point, it is important to establish whether trust and formal
control act as complements, or substitutes, or both, depending upon the
specific configuration of coopetitive settings. Moreover, while trust is
able to mitigate certain coopetitive tensions, this ability seems to be
constrained by the complexity and risks characterizing the coopetitive
environment (Le Roy, Robert, & Lasch, 2016). What the boundary
conditions are for trust to effectively defuse conflicts in coopetition, and
whether trust can paradoxically engender new tensions among coope-
titors, remains to be investigated in future studies.
Third, in addition to adopting a multilevel approach, taking a cross-
level perspective on trust in coopetition represents a viable and much-
needed direction for future research. By traversing different levels of
analysis, scholars may gain a deeper understanding of how trustful
relationships that are forged among coopetitors on multiple levels
mutually impact each other. Topics covered in this domain may involve
both bottom-up emergent phenomena (arising, for instance, when in-
terpersonal trust in coopetition translates into establishing trusting re-
lationships between groups and organizations) and top-down con-
textual influences (determining situations when interorganizational
trust trickles down to the intergroup or interpersonal level). Despite
some progress achieved in this area (note, for example, Mariani's (2016)
observations of the crucial role of interpersonal trust in developing
trusting relationships between the networks of coopetitors), the specific
mechanisms underlying the interactions among various levels of trust in
coopetition remain insufficiently understood, therefore calling for
greater research attention to cross-level analysis issues (Bengtsson &
Raza-Ullah, 2016).
Fourth, although some of the studies cited above point to the dy-
namic nature of trusting relationships in coopetition, our knowledge of
A. Lascaux
-
or
exchanges
outcomes
al
results
Antecedents Processes
Fig. 1. A dynamic, multilevel model of trust in coopetition.
how trust among coopetitors emerges, evolves, strengthens, breaks
down and resurfaces is still vastly incomplete. Questions which need to
be addressed in this respect refer to (1) whether trust established be-
tween rival firms reveals different features at various stages of colla-
boration (for example, as supposed by Castaldo and Dagnino (2009),
being calculus-based at the starting point of a coopetitive project and
gradually becoming knowledge-based as firms amass positive experi-
ence in their collaborative interactions); (2) what factors contribute to
the reinforcement or deterioration of trusting relationships in a coo-
petitive environment; (3) whether some periods in coopetitive colla-
boration are characterized by the increased instability of trust or even
by abrupt shifts, reversals and fluctuations between trust and distrust
(Tidström & Hagberg-Andersson, 2012; Zerbini & Castaldo, 2007); (4)
whether the processes of interpersonal and interorganizational trust
development in coopetition are similar or divergent; (5) whether the
patterns of trust accumulation in coopetition relate to the attainment of
pre-established goals of a coopetitive project and if yes, what factors
could moderate or mediate this relationship. Longitudinal studies of
coopetition (Akpinar & Vincze, 2016, Chiambaretto & Dumez, 2016,
Tidström & Hagberg-Andersson, 2012) can help elucidate the me-
chanisms behind the dynamics of trust among coopetitors, and in-
creasing their numbers is seen as an important future task.
Fifth, future studies may wish to focus on the reverse impact of
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Industrial Marketing Management 84 (2020) 2–18
Inter-
trust
I
trust
Intergroup
trust
-
Inter-
personal
trust
Outcomes
coopetition on trust. This strand of development involves the in-
vestigation of (1) how coopetition affects the advancement (or break-
down) of trust; (2) how trusting relationships are influenced by sudden
or gradual shifts in the competition/cooperation balance; (3) how trust
is shaped by the specificity of coopetitive interactions in various in-
dustrial settings, among firms of different age and size or between
partners with dissimilar coopetitive experience; (4) whether mutual
trust among coopetitors is dependent upon innovation and performance
outcomes achieved in coopetitive collaboration; (5) whether trust is
predicated on the coopetitors' satisfaction with their relationship and
their desire to renew or expand cooperative projects embracing direct
rivals. Along with other research directions outlined above, this per-
spective opens the way for a deeper understanding of the origins,
manifestations and implications of trust in the coopetitive realm.
The next five directions for further research relate to an array of
specific features of trust, which may have a noticeable impact on coo-
petitive interactions. First of all, following McAllister (1995), we can
divide trusting attitudes into two categories, cognition-based and affect-
based. Cognitive trust relies on the perceived competence and de-
pendability of a partner. In contrast, affective trust rests on the emo-
tional attachment that develops between the partners and their re-
ciprocal intention to collaborate. Future studies in this area may wish to
examine the relative importance of cognitive and affective trust in
A. Lascaux
coopetitive relationships; the differential impact of cognition- and af-
fect-based trust on the outcomes of collaboration at the early and ma-
ture stages of the relationship lifecycle (Dowell, Morrison, & Heffernan,
2014); the role of the cognitive and affective aspects of trust in
knowledge sharing across the boundaries of competing/collaborating
organizations (Chowdhury, 2005; Ha, Park, & Cho, 2011; Swift &
Hwang, 2013); the interaction effects between the cultural influences
and the cognitive/affective dimensions of trust in coopetition (Chua,
Morris, & Ingram, 2009) and the impact of the interpersonal and in-
tergroup cognition- and affect-based trust on coopetitive team perfor-
mance (Erdem & Ozen, 2003; Parayitam & Dooley, 2009).
Another research avenue worth investigation concerns the role of
swift trust in coopetitive settings. Meyerson et al. (1996) define swift
trust as an initially assumed positive attitude towards coworkers within
a group or a team, which will be later verified and adjusted in sub-
sequent collaborative activities. Since this form of trust is closely as-
sociated with temporary systems (Crisp & Jarvenpaa, 2013), the notion
of swift trust can be fruitfully applied to studying interpersonal trust in
the context of coopetitive projects undertaken by members of virtual
teams (Baruch & Lin, 2012; Lin et al., 2010). More specifically, future
studies may focus on the influence of team member characteristics on
the formation of swift trust in competing/cooperating teams (Robert Jr
et al., 2009), the evolutionary development of swift trust in a coope-
titive environment (Wildman et al., 2012) and the effects of swift trust
on sharing and recombining knowledge in virtual teams involved in
coopetitive collaboration.
Yet another strand of possible research is associated with the deeper
exploration of the trust/distrust dichotomy in coopetitive settings.
Extant literature has already offered some evidence on the negative
effects of distrust in coopetitive relationships, highlighting its harmful
impact on interorganizational knowledge exchange (Li et al., 2011;
Salvetat et al., 2013), the spirit of interfirm cooperation (Lacoste, 2014)
and an ability to achieve the outcomes specified in a coopetitive project
(Enberg, 2012). However, a broader question remains as to whether it is
possible to maintain steady coopetitive interactions if one of collabor-
ating rivals shows distrust of its partners from the beginning of their
joint activities. We may tentatively suggest a positive answer to the
above question, focusing on those instances where firms that engage in
coopetition merely wish to gain access to their partners' valuable
knowledge or products, therefore seeing little need in establishing long-
standing trustful relationships with their counterparts. Yet these argu-
ments clearly require empirical validation.
An important area for further examination of trusting relationships
in a coopetitive context relates to the potentially adverse outcomes of
excessive trust that can be displayed towards the partner in a colla-
borative project. A number of scholars have emphasized the negative
consequences of establishing overly trusting relationships between non-
competing organizations (Anderson & Jap, 2005; Molina-Morales &
Martínez-Fernández, 2009; Molina-Morales, Martínez-Fernández, &
Torlò, 2011; Uzzi, 1996, 1997; Wicks, Berman, & Jones, 1999). These
detrimental effects include low innovativeness, insensitivity to im-
portant external knowledge, missed market opportunities, deteriorating
firm performance and poor adaptive fit with an ever changing en-
vironmental context. It remains to be seen in future research whether
an overreliance on trust emerging from repeated and dense interactions
between the same rival firms plays a negative role in their coopetitive
interactions. In part, we need convincing empirical evidence sub-
stantiating the argument that competitors maintaining excessively close
cooperative relationships based on mutual trust exhibit a lack of crea-
tive tension and innovative development (Bengtsson et al., 2010),
which would adversely affect their future competitive positions in the
market.
Finally, prospective research can address the issue of mutuality of
trust in coopetition. Scholars have long recognized that reciprocal trust
embedded in the partners' mutual expectations of commitment to col-
laborative goals and the fulfilment of promises made by the parties can
15
Industrial Marketing Management 84 (2020) 2–18
strengthen cooperation between rival actors (Lado et al., 1997; Seran
et al., 2016). However, little is known about the consequences of the
violation of mutuality in trusting expectations held among coopetitors.
As Dorn et al. (2016) rightly observe, the distribution of trust among
the actors involved in coopetitive interactions and, particularly, the
impact of unbalanced trust (when one partner trusts more than the
other) on coopetition processes and outcomes remain insufficiently
explored. We may suppose that certain kinds of coopetitive partner-
ships exhibit the lack of mutual trust between collaborating parties, for
example, when some participating firms attempt to ‘outlearn’ their
partners by absorbing novel knowledge faster than other organizations
and ceasing cooperative efforts as soon as they reach their learning
objectives in a coopetitive project (Hamel, 1991; Khanna, Gulati, &
Nohria, 1998). Whether reciprocity of trust is critically important for
the success of coopetitive collaboration or this requirement can be re-
laxed in some instances remains an important topic for future empirical
studies.
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