Cross-Functional “Coopetition”: The Simultaneous Role of Cooperation and Competition within Firms

Extant marketing literature tends to view cross-functional relationships as primarily cooperative or competitive in nature, but not both. In contrast, this research focuses on cross-functional “coopetition” (i.e., the joint occurrence of cooperation and competition across functional areas within a firm). Using responses from midlevel managers and top executives, the authors find that cross-functional coopetition enhances a firm's customer and financial performance. The authors further show that this influence is mediated by market learning, indicating that performance returns to cross-functional coopetition occurs through an underlying learning mechanism.