Alliances with Frenemies: Coopetition and Capability Building
Summary: Sadeghi, Aliasghar & Sadeghi (2026) examine how coopetition (simultaneous cooperation and competition with rivals) leads to superior performance. Absorptive capacity is the key mediating mechanism; unlearning is a catalyst for absorptive capacity rather than a direct performance driver. More than half of coopetitive relationships fail.
Sources: Academia/Alliances-with-frenemies--capability-building-mechanism_2026_Journal-of-Busi.pdf
Last updated: 2026-05-06
Citation
Sadeghi, A., Aliasghar, O., & Sadeghi, V. J. (2026). Alliances with frenemies: capability-building mechanisms linking coopetition to firm performance. Journal of Business Research, 208, 116076.
What is coopetition?
Coopetition (Bengtsson & Kock, 2000) = simultaneously pursuing cooperative and competitive interactions with the same rivals for mutual benefit.
The cooperative dimension: knowledge sharing, resource pooling, risk distribution
The competitive dimension: protecting critical assets, maintaining strategic advantage
This inherent tension is the source of both the upside and the failure risk. Coopetition is a double-edged sword: more than half of coopetitive relationships result in underperformance or failure, due to learning races, opportunistic behavior, and inadequate managerial capacity to manage the tension.
The mediating mechanism: absorptive capacity
Absorptive capacity (AC): the organizational ability to recognize, assimilate, transform, and exploit external knowledge.
The paper argues (and confirms) that coopetition creates conditions for AC development:
- Partners share knowledge that they would not otherwise share with pure competitors
- The competitive pressure forces the firm to actually use that knowledge quickly
- AC in turn drives both financial and non-financial performance
AC fully mediates the coopetition → performance link in the data (190 Iranian SMEs).
The role of unlearning
Unlearning: the deliberate shedding of outdated knowledge, routines, or assumptions to make room for new knowledge.
The hypothesis was that unlearning would directly mediate coopetition → performance. This was not confirmed. Instead, unlearning functions as a catalyst for AC development — enabling the firm to absorb new knowledge by clearing out prior frameworks that would otherwise resist it.
This is a meaningful finding: unlearning matters, but it is an upstream enabler, not a direct performance driver.
SME-specific vulnerability
The paper focuses on SMEs because coopetition is riskier for them:
- Limited resources make opportunistic partner behavior more damaging
- Less managerial experience navigating the tension
- Higher vulnerability to capability extraction by larger coopetitors
The finding that AC mediates performance is especially actionable for SMEs: building absorptive capacity (through knowledge management practices, internal R&D investment, boundary-spanning roles) is the specific capability that converts coopetitive risk into return.