Coopetition in Interpersonal Networks: Networks are Networks

Abstract

Society is organized in networks. The network perspective is something that should be regarded as inherent to social life, especially when looking at the fact that it is not feasible (or even possible) for a given actor - whether a person or an organization - to live completely independently and isolated from others. These arrangements or network structures are usually addressed in management literature under an organizational perspective and, accordingly, may be formed in contexts ranging from competition, collaboration and a mixed type of relationship. In the latter, players who normally compete instead collaborate to achieve any goal that is held in common. This type of relationship between organizations is denominated coopetition. This paper proposes abandoning the exclusive adoption of the term and this type of relationship in the meso context. To demonstrate that there is no theoretical argument sufficiently organized that leads researchers to believe that this approach should be linked exclusively to a meso context, this paper makes use of a bibliographic study. As presented, the goal is to show that the concept of coopetition can also be applied to the context of individual relationships (micro).

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