Understanding Developers’ Strategic Responses to Dynamics in a
Collective Action Entity: A Coopetition Perspective
Master Thesis
MSc. Strategic Innovation Management
University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
Jeffrey Lapré
Student number: S1762346
Supervisor Thesis: T.L.J. (Thijs) Broekhuizen
Co-assessor: P.J. (Philip) Steinberg
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
Collective action can be defined as the behavior or actions of a group working toward a common/ shared/collective goal or interest (Ostrom, 1990; Oliver, 1993). Examples include groups of individuals that engage in collective action to benefit from the strength of the group's combined resources, knowledge and efforts to reach a goal shared by all parties; for instance: the establishment of a regional wind energy project or a public-private labor market project. Such collective action efforts often experience conflicts and problems due to the distinctive and mixed objectives and interests of individual parties. As the multiple individuals would all benefit from a certain action (e.g. saving the environment, helping people with a distance to the labor market, not overfishing seas), but has an associated cost (investments, lower revenues), it makes it less plausible that any individual can or will undertake and solve it alone, leading to the well-known ‘collective action dilemma’ (Ostrom, 1990). Individual parties active in these collective entities are often confronted with complex dynamics, like changing partner dynamics (e.g., new partner composition, changing inter-party intensities, conflicts) and project demands (e.g., new or adjusted goals, changes in market pressures). This study will try to analyze how an individual party (i.e., developers), who is not the project leader, may navigate or strategically maneuver these dynamics in a collective action initiative using a coopetition perspective.
collaboration. Unbalanced situations may lead to unwanted consequences that undermine the joint value creation intent (Gnyawali and Ryan Charleton, 2018). This research focuses on how individual contributing parties can strategically manage the cooperation entity in response to its dynamics. This study contributes to both the coopetition and collective action literature. From a coopetition perspective, rather than investigating the network leaders or the complete entity (e.g., Xu and Yang, 2015; Lin, Wang, Tsai, & Hsu, 2010), this study takes a more in-depth approach by investigating a single contributing party’s actions of a non-network leader, and monitor closely how and why it has responded to the inherent dynamics of such coopetition initiatives. This helps to improve our understanding of why and how parties behave in these coopetition entities. This study contributes to the collective action literature by investigating how private, profit-oriented parties (who may aspire to contribute to local, regional, national or transnational societies) may behave and respond to the dynamics in such projects. The interests and needs of the developer differ from public organizations, as it is generally more focused on attaining individual and financial benefits. Overall, extant boundary research primarily examines atomistic boundary choices in well-structured organizations and environments. A few studies take a longitudinal view on multiparty alliances and that they are hard to manage because of the level of unbalance between competition and cooperation, and this will influence the external success of the collaboration. There is an opportunity to develop a more complete and theoretically rich understanding from a developer perspective. Based on this, the following research question will be answered: “How and why do developers respond strategically to partner dynamics in a coopetition entity for collective action?” This study adopts a case study approach shall create insight and an in-depth understanding of the challenges that occur when a developer collaborates in a coopetition entity. It analyses how a contributing party, like a project developer, strategically manages and navigates the dynamics of the cooperation entity, and reacts to secure individual benefits, while contributing to the collective benefits. By taking a coopetition perspective, this paper explains how and why developers respond. Central to this understanding is how developers (in response to partner and project dynamics) navigate and maneuver the balance between cooperation and competition.
but also compete (Brandenburger and Nalebuff, 1997). For instance, actors may cooperate in order to establish a common goal, while they will compete once that goal is realized or search for opportunities to gain more private benefits (at the expense of other actors). 3. Interdependencies between actors are inherent to collective action. Interdependencies result from differences between actors in terms of resources, time and money possessed. Interdependencies may trigger collective action as resourceful actors make collaboration attractive for others (Heckathorn, 1993). If such interdependencies are clearly present, actors find it rational to collaborate, which in turn reduces the risk of free-rider behavior (Marwell et al., 1988). When degree of interdependency between partners decreases, the partners perceive less necessity to stay engaged in collective action (Walter et al. 2012), and experience reduced incentives and willingness to participate in collective action (Monge et al., 1998).
4. Governance of relations between actors engaged in collective action is relevant (De Reuver and Bouwman, 2012). Specifically, a clear authority or leadership structure is important to attract contributors, attain momentum and select the most promising partners for collective action (Bianco and Bates, 1990). Many researchers highlight the critical role of leaders, organizers or entrepreneurs to provide selective incentives and organize group activities for underlining the common goal or provisioning the collective good (Frohlich et al., 1971). Salisbury (1969) defines leaders as “those who invest capital to create a set of benefits” (i.e., selective incentives) for potential members to join a group. He underlines that if the benefits fail or costs exceed the benefits for both potential members and leaders, the whole group will collapse. Marwell et al. (1988) discuss that in a centralized network with the presence of resource and interest heterogeneity, leaders can select the most attractive contributors and thus promote the likelihood of appearance of collective action.
Given the above-mentioned characteristics of collective action, individual parties are often confronted with complex dynamics, like changing partner dynamics (e.g., new partner composition, changing interdependencies, conflicts) and project demands (e.g., new or adjusted goals, external market pressures). In this study, I will take a coopetition perspective to analyze the dynamics of a collective action.
Coopetition theory
opportunities that cannot be attained individually (Gnyawali and Park, 2009; 2011). The degree to which coopetition entities – consisting of multiple parties that cooperate and compete at the same time create joint value depends on the balance between the cooperation and competition level between parties (Bengtsson and Kock, 2000; 2014; Brandenburger and Nalebuff, 1996).
Cooperation, which reflects the intentional arrangement between organizations involving exchange, sharing, or co-development of products, technologies, or services” (Gulati, 1998: 293), facilitates the pursuit of common goals by means of collective action (Gulati, 1998), but without competition firms may become complacent. Competition is focused on capturing private value (instead of creating collective value) in order to enhance or redefine the organization’s strategic position and securing private returns at the expense of competitors (Porter, 1980, Gnyawali et al., 2008; 2016). Both collaboration and competition have advantages, but they also have their respective challenges. Coopetition, on the other hand, combines all the benefits of cooperation and competition, while minimizing the challenges. Joint value destruction may occur through the negative consequence of the coopetition mechanisms. Where mutual pursuits lead to increased opportunities for self-interested partners to misappropriate each other’s resources, it can cause distrust in the relationship and make partners less likely to invest in shared resources. (Gnyawali and Ryan Charleton, 2018).
Competition helps to overcome issues when cooperation becomes high; firms may become complacent. How a coopetition entity can engage in collective action is dynamic, complex and hard to manage because of the varying levels of intensity of competition and cooperation and the balance between them influence the external success of the collaboration. Unbalanced situations may lead to unwanted consequences that undermine the joint value creation intent (Gnyawali and Ryan Charleton, 2018). Competition may give rise to destructive tensions within the collaboration if the companies focus predominantly on their individual economic benefit at the expense of the collaborative social benefit (Hahn and Pinkse, 2014). The dynamic nature of the balance between cooperation and competition within a coopetition entity further illustrates the need for strategic responding and maneuvering (Baumard, 2009; Ketchen et al., 2004; Teece and Leih, 2016) rather than strategic planning (McGrath, 2010); navigating simultaneity is more feasible and appropriate than steering it.
distorts the pillars of stable cooperation, i.e., maintaining the relationship between benefits derived and one’s own contribution to the system (Cygler and Sroka, 2017). A loss of organizational independence and decision-making is an equally dangerous threat curtailing from competitive cooperation. Asymmetric access to resources also may arise (Gnyawali and Madhavan, 2001).
Gnyawali and Ryan Charleton (2018) illustrates how simultaneity varies along two dimensions: intensity and balance (figure 2). Differences in these dimensions shape the manifestations of the coopetition mechanisms and the potential positive or negative consequences that are emphasized. Coopetition intensity is beneficial to collective outcomes, innovation performance improves when this intensity is higher. In Figure 2, intensities of competition and cooperation are captured by the x-axis and y-axis, separately. Coopetition intensity is high when the intensities of competition and cooperation are high. Balance is maintained when a rise in the intensity of competition is matched by a corresponding rise in the intensity of cooperation and vice versa (Gnyawali and Ryan Charleton, 2018).
increase resource dependencies
(
Gnyawali and Park, 2009; 2011). And that the level of cooperation and competition generally increase over time (Gnyawali et al., 2016; Ketchen et al., 2004).
Easy alignment between social benefits and firms’ economic interests is not always possible, thus highlighting the tensions and the contradictions that need to be embraced (Gao and Bansal, 2013; Smith et al., 2013). Coopetition mechanisms that emerge through the dynamic interplay of competition and cooperation. These mechanisms reveal unique underlying properties of the phenomenon and help to explain why and how contributors of a coopetition may react in response to dynamics (Gnyawali and Ryan Charleton, 2018). The results focus on two main elements: the dynamics that influence the coopetition intensity and the conflicts between parties over time between the developers and the other parties involved in the coopetition entity. Overall, the literature identifies that collective actions are difficult to manage, have inherent dilemmas, that coopetition intensity looks at how the simultaneous pursuit of cooperation and competition may enhance the value creation intent and success of coopetition entities. The literature, however, does not yet reveal how and why individual, non-network leader parties may strategically maneuver and respond to partner dynamics in a multilateral coopetition entity. As coopetition entities evolve, and sufficient levels of competition and cooperation are needed to flourish, there is a need to understand how non-network leaders can contribute to achieving the common goal while securing sufficient private rents from the collective action project. We lack knowledge on how developers, who have relatively small contributions and less power relative to more powerful network leaders, can react strategically to the dynamism within cooperation entities – i.e., how developers react to the dynamics. I will take a relational perspective and investigate how and why they respond to the coopetition intensity (balance and intensity of competition-cooperation), the emergence of inter-group dynamics and partner conflicts, and how these affect developers’ behaviors and outcomes.
METHODOLOGY This study performs a case study to develop an in-depth understanding of how project developers respond to the dynamics in an entity for collective action. A case study analysis seems appropriate as limited academic knowledge exists on such responses (Eisenhardt, 1989). This provides room for new theoretical insights based on the new gained insights. Case studies allow gaining insight into the context, organizational relationships, knowledge and experiences of practitioners in the working field (Benbasat et al., 1987; Cavaye, 1996). The analysis is based on an empirical case that involves a collaboration with a common collective purpose (see below).
Case study selection
The coopetition entity selected consists of public and private parties that want to develop a wind energy plan in a local community. It is led by a regional governmental institution, and involves the following other contributing actors: developers, landowners and local society groups. The coopetition entity resides in the province of the Netherland and meets the aspects of a collective action project with multiple (public and private) stakeholders with different interests. The case entails an initiative to realize a wind energy project with a rated power between 30 and 36MW. The province of the Netherland by virtue of national agreements needs to realize 225 MW Wind Energy by the end of 2020. The provincial structural vision has designated areas to start wind energy projects. The competitive developers are asked to invest and help develop the wind energy projects in the designated areas. Landowners are requested to share their land to place wind turbines, and either contribute directly (in kind or in other resources) to the project or simply receive an annual land lease contribution. The municipality and local citizens are also involved because of the impact on the local environment. Finally, the local citizens are also represented by village representatives.
The projected started in 2008 during the acquisition phase of the project rights, while the construction phase of the project started in 2019. The project contains a large wind farm with 12 wind turbines (WT) with a nominal capacity of 3.0 MW/WT. The Province has created a multiparty alliance with stakeholders that are directly involved with the wind energy project. During the acquisition and construction process, the project developer had to strategically maneuver and respond to the dynamics of a coopetition entity until realizing the windfarm. An overview of these coopetitors and their characteristics can be found in table 1.
Stakeholder
number Start date of involvement with project
FTEs involved
Position
In the project Type of stakeholder Actor Developer I 2008 3 Co-project owner Small
Developer of wind turbines?
Contributor
Developer II 2008 2 Co-project owner Energy company and Developer
Contributor
Province 2012 3 Network Leader Province of the Netherland
Primary Authority
Municipality 2012 1 Stakeholder Municipality Secondary Authority/ representative for the residents within the municipality
Landowner 2008 4 Stakeholder Landowners Residents who lease their land
Citizens I 2014 4 Stakeholder Local village representatives
Residents living 800-1500m from the plan area
question. Primary data are collected via interviews – interviews held between October 2019 and November 2019 – with employees of most relevant actors (see Table 1). To understand how and why developers respond as they do, such interviews can reveal motivations to understand the parties’ actions, (perceived) conflicts and interdependencies. Secondary data question about the wind energy project and multiparty alliance is available from Q2 2014 until Q3 2019, new data (realization data of the windfarm) from Q4 2019 until 2020 will also be used to answer the research question.
Using the different data collection methods (participatory observations, interviews, offline/online news sources) is useful because a multi-method approach provides stronger substantiation for this research (Eisenhardt, 1998); it also allows for triangulation and enriching of insights by combining and contrasting insights from the multiple sources.
Semi-structured interviews are held with the respondents as a main source of data collection. All parties andthe key representatives involved in the cooperation process are interviewed. Table 1 gives an overview of the involved coopetitors and their characteristics. The ten interviews are conducted face-to-face. These interviews help to understand the drivers of coopetitors’ behaviors by retrieving their perceptions, motives, attitudes, opinions and intentions.
And it will also extend the breadth and depth of the study by providing additional insights that complement the findings from the collaboration (Huberman, 1994; Krueger and Casey, 2000). The observation where based on active participation by working as a project manager, besides joining project and management meetings, also involved during decision making with internal and external stakeholders. As an employee of a one of the developer in the coopetition entity, a certain risk can occur that the competitor would not classify me as a neutral and/or objective researcher and share certain information or respond truthfully. To Involving secondary data and third-party online information (LexisNexis) increases the objectivity and gives more insight in the context during the interviews. Also, to minimize the risk is to question a third person what the other developer thinks of me as an objective researcher.
Third-party online information is collected from LexisNexis and relevant news sources are used in the research to reflect the interviews and other data. Next, as such projects have wide implications for regions, such projects are often discussed in local, regional and national newspapers. Hence, LexisNexis is also used to reflect the public and internal documentation. This data also increases the objectivity, gives more insight in the context and reduces the chance of retrospective biasing during the interviews. Data analysis The case study approach allows to reveal how the coopetition evolved. The data collected from the researcher observations, interviews, and secondary sources, were used to first create a case history of the development of the coopetition collaboration (Eisenhardt, 1989). With the use of visual mapping and a crucial project timeline (Langley, 1999), the findings were (re)constructed to provide further support the history of the development of the coopetition entity over time. In particular, I analyzed the interactions between actors, the level of competition and competition experienced on the individual and group level, as well as the strategic responses like collaboration conflicts by changing the objectives of multiple actors individually and in relation to one another.
Using data directly from the wind energy project, the semi-structured, face-to-face interviews, the project meetings and additional data sources. The semi-structured interviews are recorded and transcribed. The interview transcripts are sent to the respondents to verify what has been addressed. The timeline divided the major developments phases, discussions and decisions that happened during the project timeline of the wind energy project. Project information, like minute of meetings during the years, are combined with more recent descriptive histories with opinions and considerations of the coopetitors involved in the Wind energy project (Eisenhardt, 1989; Langley, 1999). To methodically analyze the data concerning the wind energy project, a matrix will be constructed and encodes: 1. The different issues discussed during meetings, 2. The strategic actions and reactions performed from by the different coopetitors (i.e. primary authority supervisor and initiator (network leader), initiator (non-leader), secondary authority/ representative, different residents (financial involved)),
The cross-matrix comparisons (Eisenhardt, 1989) are used to recurring topics that have been identified by inductive coding (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007), which have been grouped according to the activities of the coopetition entity: content and scope, project development, market knowledge, legal knowledge, procurement/finance and realization level of all coopetitors. Interview and archival data have been included to specify the identified object of interest that changed over time. I analyzed these changes according to three main phases that are divided further into seven individual sub-phases of coopetitive dynamics. I then used these (sub-)phases to structure the final results.
• 4. Incentives and additional term and conditions for the local society (IATC) establish and maintain the signed anterior agreement, by preventing conflicts during the introduction of an acceleration in the permit procedure, negotiate the final additional term and conditions for new social benefits in expense of the developer and determine to downsize the additional terms and conditions by the developers and maintain the acceleration in the permit procedure.
• 5. Zoning and Permit Procedure (ZPP). Establishing the accelerated permit procedure by derogation of the zoning plan to secure the subsidy, by preventing conflicts during the additional term and conditions for new social benefits and conditions in expense of the developer and determine the timeline and preparation to the final application of the permits and dispensations.
3 Finance and Realization Phase
RESULTS
Phase 1: Coopetition during the Acquisition Phase: Dealing with Competitive Pressures from other Developers
General activities
Stakeholder
number Content and scope (Wind-energy development scope and detail (SDE), AO (AA)) experience Project development (DDP, technical studies, wind studies, IATC) experience Legal knowledge (Zoning-plan and permits (ZZP)) experience Procurement / Finance (Procurement, project finance, off-balance finance (FC)) experience Realization (realization windfarm (RS)) experience I. X X X X X II. X X X X X III. X X X X IV. X X X V. X X VI. X X VII. Table 2. Estimated knowledge and experience of network leader and coopetitors. Developer actions, conflicts and tensions Competition arose between developers, as they competed for a large size in a concentrated area at the start of the project. The individual projects in the concentrated area where evaluated by province and was willing to cooperate. Developers experienced intense competition during the acquisition phase to secure private or/and public land rights in this project. This decision stage determined how large the share of economic benefits would become in the project. Coopetitors allocated time and resources to specific or various activities. Conflicts arose between developers (see table A) when they wanted to increase their share in the project by communicating individually with the network leader, this is addressed in figure 2, Multilateral tensions between the non-leader, network leader and coopetitors - acquisition phase 1). Supporting quotes Strong level of competition between developers Developer 1 Developer 2 Coopetitors 3 “There are 2 individual projects with no organizational, legal or technical binding, we sent out an project proposal two years ago and we are the driver of this project, first come first serve.“ ( internal documentation, emphasis added). “We had the largest share in the region and therefore we wanted to setup an acceptable layout with”.
“The competitive developers didn’t want to cooperate with each other because of some contract issues with landowners and both claimed that they had biggest piece of the pie in the region.” (interview stakeholder 3).
The developers were aware of the complexity of this project and needed to collaborate, or else there would be no agreement on the wind turbine lay-out and procurement process on the short term. This also had an effect on the lead-time of the development process and increases the risk of a failure of the project. For both developers, the objective was clear: to obtain the (building) permit and subsidy as quickly as possible to secure the feasibility of the project; it is considered a condition sine qua non: without this stage, the second stage of development stage would not take place. The identification of these shared risks and the pressure to create a shared goal facilitated cooperation among competitors and increased the possibility to collaborate among the two competitors. These interactions led to a collaboration with an equal share structure of 50% ownership in 2015 during the acquisition phase. Conflicts arose between the developers and other coopetitors when the network leader introduced additional individual demands in the meeting of November 20th 2016. These demands would be perceived as unfair, and in conflict with the shared goal of the coopetition, and created tensions and harm to the other coopetitors. These additional individual demands come particularly at the expense of the private benefits of developers. The balance between cooperation-competition was erratic in this stage due to the individual demands of coopetitors. A clear subdivision of the coopetition entity into competing groups was noticeable: developers versus the public parties (see figure 2). Figure 2. Multilateral tensions between the non-leader, network leader and coopetitors - acquisition phase 1 Coopetition intensity from a developer perspective
The cooperation with the developers eventually shifted from competition-dominant to a more cooperative-dominant coopetition. However, the competition between the developers and the province strongly increased at the end of this phase.
The coopetitors were willing to join the collaborate to get informed about the development process, and their interest and goal was to be involved how the compensation allowance or social benefits are going to be established. The interest and goal of the local village representatives was to improve the quality of life in the region and this could be achieved if the developers, province and municipality contribute financially. “In the memo of March 12, 2017, the first concept proposal for the park fund was introduced based on a donation of the developers.” The interest and goals of the landowners were to join the collaboration to stay informed and involved in the development process in the hope of future benefits that landowners would receive for having a wind turbine on their land. “Based on an internal Management Minute of Meeting April 18, it becomes clear to the developers that all the landowners were in negotiation or had already a contract with one of the competing developers.
established in the final anterior agreement and was signed by the coopetitors developers, province and municipality in the development phase.
Citizen I and II Building faster is not relevant anymore, it’s just a matter of time that this windfarm is going to be constructed, so let the biggest part of the contributions just flow back to the residents who live directly around the windfarm. (Interviews Citizen I and II). If the developers want this windfarm as soon as possible, then let’s share the upside with us. (Interviews Citizen I and II). Table C. Supporting quotes Municipality and citizens Municipality and citizens Municipality
“How can we ensure that the region is well informed about the social benefits resulting from this project, how can we showcase our concept proposal to the region”. (internal memorandum, emphasis added). “How can we ensure that the companies in the municipality can also benefit from this project, what are the criteria.” (internal documentation, emphasis added). “Maybe we need to think about our own “dorpsmolen” village wind turbine and how we can financially achieve this” (internal documentation, emphasis added) Table D. Phase 2: Coopetition during the Development: Collaborating with Developer to Gain Leverage against Network Leader General activities
coopetitors - project development phase 2). The public organization introduced the new terms and conditions as a precondition to corporate. The province and municipality introduced new additional obligations that are in conflict with the shared agreements from collaboration, like participating as shareholder the project. The additional obligations imposed by the public organizations finally led to an intensification of the cooperation between the two competitive developers during phase 2. This thus resulted in an increasingly cooperation-dominant coopetition phase. The interaction between the coopetitors in the development phase increases, and in terms of content deals with the conditions and limitations of the coopetition. The intensification of the cooperation during this phase between the two competitive developers resulted in to an increasing cooperation-dominant coopetition as presented in figure 4. The interactions between the two developers generates new insight and ideas, like acceleration possibilities of the zoning plan and permit procedure to eliminate more project risks.
and burdens for the coopetitors within the municipality according to the standard provincial regulations and obligations. For the network leader, municipality, Citizens I and II this extension of regulations and obligations was to create additional revenues for the region and to add value for the long-term development of the region. For the developers, this wind energy project was one of the projects in their portfolio that finally could be developed after six years and that could create value and compensate for a part of the sunk costs. For them, the extension of the regulations and obligations could lead to precedent effects in other wind energy projects, and create additional risks in the development planning and feasibility of this project.
division between public and private parties) during the development phase. This complicated the success of a shared ambition to realize the wind energy project in 2020.
Phase 3: Coopetition during finance and realization: Finding a Balance
General activities
Coopetition intensity in an entity does not display a positive linear relationship over time in which coopetitors increase the level of cooperation and competition with other coopetitors. Especially, remarkable is the drop in intensity in the last phase of the coopetition entity between the developers and the network leader.
The external pressure imposed by the province, led the developers to more closely invest in each other, as they all experienced a similar threat. This increased the level of trust and understanding in the collaboration between developers.
CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
In sum, in a multilateral coopetition entity for collective action, non-network leaders may shift their competition-cooperation focus (even for the same partner) depending on the phase and goals that can be attained. Developers, may despite being small in size and legislative power steer the coopetition entity when they succeed to actively create momentum with the right partners and secure private gains. While the initial phases are about making relational investments in search of resource complementarity, the second phase is much more dynamic with dramatic re-orientations and conflicts; the final phase is less dynamic because of the lock-in situation, greater knowledge on partner’s needs and benefits. The coopetition entity functions as parties follow proposed obligations, and more well defined tasks and responsibilities. Theoretical implications Overall, this study results contribute to the current understanding of how coopetition can unfold over time. These results also contribute to a new perspective regarding the non-network leader, despite their limited role, these private parties can respond strategically and influence the success of the collaboration from a coopetition entity. First, the findings suggest that in terms of response strategies that the developers responded rather similarly during the three phases. This finding may suggest that similar firms (with overlapping needs) follow a common response strategy, and that the dynamics occurred in the coopetition entity similarly impacted the developers. This study finds that small players can actively shape the coopetition entity and secure private rents when they succeed in establishing partnerships with shared interests and binding (or even stealing) parties to develop more leverage to control the coopetition entity by getting momentum through aligning the interests of multiple parties. Second, this study also highlighted the possible drivers of dynamics. The results suggest that changes to (1) the knowledge of the partner’s goals and acquired gains, (2) the level of risk in the project, and (3) the ability to align interests and link to other coopetitors shift competition and cooperation intensities.
remarkable is the drop in intensity in the last phase of the coopetition entity between the developers and the network leader. For many projects with a final date, coopetition intensity may deteriorate, because future gains are expected to decrease, and because tasks, responsibilities become more formalized and require less coordination and collaboration. Managerial implications The findings of this study may help to prepare developers (as well as other parties) about how to respond to dynamics within coopetition entities for collective action. Project risks is the highest during acquisition and development phase, these risks can lead to a delay in planning, failure to promptly obtain subsidies and can results in a not financeable project. During these phases, the network leader (Province) has the highest power and can persuade and pressure developers to further investments and commit resources. Small players like developers, can actively shape the coopetition entity and secure private rents when they succeed in establishing partnerships with shared interests and binding (or even stealing) parties to develop more leverage to control the coopetition entity by getting momentum through aligning the interests of multiple parties. To mitigate external pressures and additional demands that originate from public organizations after finalizing the initial cooperation understanding. The project objectives, tasks and responsibilities need to be established for each coopetitor and formalized in an official agreement with all the stakeholders at the start of a project. To reduce additional risks for developers, a contingency plan can be introduced to appoint an independent advisory board to ensure the right balance between the public parties and private stakeholders if they are in the event of a conflict (that may result from unexpected additional demands imposed by one actor on other actors).
Essential benefits for the developer during the negotiation in development phase, is to search for partners with shared interests and binding parties to create more leverage to control the coopetition entity by getting momentum through multiple party. Quickly learning the exact needs and private benefits of partners is essential for negotiating those deals that also provide private benefits to the developers.
LIMITATIONS & FUTURE RESEARCH
A limitation of the study is that it is based on a single in-depth case study of multilateral coopetition in response to a wind energy project. Although the specific research design enabled one of the first empirical explorations of multilateral coopetition as a response to how and why do developers, who are not the project leader, respond strategically to partner dynamics in a coopetition entity for collective action, more research is needed to ascertain whether the findings of this study can be more broadly generalized across different industries.
Particularly, it would be interesting to compare a multilateral coopetition with local cooperation’s to provide further insights how local cooperation respond strategically to partner dynamics in a coopetition entity for collective action, and to see what happens when coopetitors are also owners, or when network leader is also partly owner to the coopetition to realize a wind energy project. Next, future research could dissect in more detail the extent how the balance between competition and cooperation will evolve after the three phases in a coopetition entity for collective action. Finally, although if collected quasi-longitudinal data for an extended period from the early acquisition to the finance and start of the construction, if not follow the coopetition until the end of the project.
APPENDIX 1 INTERVIEW PARTICIPANTS / TOPIC LIST The following topics were discussed in the interviews. When closed questions were posed, follow-up questions were asked to probe into the reasoning behind the answer. 1. Welcome/opening/explanation of research/request for recording of the interview. 2. Business model related questions. a. What is your role in the development of this windfarm project? b. What value and resources does you or your company bring to the windfarm project? 3. Project-related questions. c. Was there a competition between the stakeholders? Which type of competition? d. Was there a conflicts between the stakeholders? Which type of conflicts? e. In which stadia was the competition between stakeholders most visible (see appendix)? f. In which stadia was the conflicts between stakeholders most visible? Why? g. How can you qualify the relationship between the stakeholders? Why?
