ABERDEEN, S.D. — Competing businesses may find more opportunities to collaborate when their employees see one another as partners rather than rivals, according to research co-authored by a Northern State University professor.
Dr. Daniel Shannahan, associate professor of management and chair of the Department of Management, Marketing and Information Systems at Northern, co-authored a study examining coopetition, a business strategy in which competing organizations cooperate to achieve shared benefits while continuing to compete for customers.
Published in the journal Organizational Dynamics, the article, titled “Brewing Coopetition: A Guide for Helping Employees Cooperate With Competitors,” explores how employees develop the willingness to work with competitors and how a shared sense of community can encourage collaboration.
“Leaders can agree to collaborate, but employees have to make it work,” Shannahan said. “We hope this research helps managers build a shared sense of purpose that allows employees to see competitors as potential partners.”
The study surveyed 143 employees across 105 craft breweries in Colorado, an industry where businesses compete for customers while also sharing knowledge, resources and professional relationships.
Researchers found that employees who felt a stronger connection to the broader craft brewing community reported greater cooperation with competing breweries and were more likely to view those businesses as allies rather than rivals.
In contrast, employees who identified more strongly with their individual breweries did not report greater cooperation with competitors.
The study also found that shared threats, such as competition from large international brewing companies, could encourage businesses to work together. However, a broader sense of community was associated with cooperation even when employees perceived little external threat.
The findings suggest that successful partnerships between competing businesses depend on more than agreements between organizational leaders.
Managers can encourage collaboration by emphasizing shared values, building professional relationships and creating opportunities for employees from different organizations to develop trust.
Although the study focused on craft breweries, the researchers identified potential applications in health care, community banking, independent film and food service.
For example, community banks may find common ground in their commitment to serving local communities, while health care organizations may collaborate around shared goals related to patient care.
The researchers also emphasize that cooperation between competitors requires appropriate boundaries, including protections for proprietary information and clear agreements about the scope of collaboration.
The project began when Shannahan and co-author Kristin Bain were doctoral students at the University of Utah. Both had observed the combination of competition and mutual support within the craft brewing industry and wanted to better understand the factors influencing employee cooperation.
Bain and Michael Palanski, both management professors at Rochester Institute of Technology, collaborated on the research. The project continued after Shannahan and Bain began their faculty appointments in 2020.
The research connects directly to Shannahan's teaching in management and organizational behavior at Northern, where students explore not only what makes a good business strategy, but also how its success depends on the people responsible for carrying it out.
Shannahan's broader research focuses on problem-solving and decision-making within organizational groups and teams, including how employees and managers understand their responsibilities and work together.
The full article is available at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0090261626000574.
For more information, contact Chad Hatzenbuhler, director of communications and marketing, at chad.hatzenbuhler@northern.edu or 605-626-2046.