Leadership effectiveness in managing the coopetition paradox. A mixed study on leadership’s behavior and the role of trust

Coopetition is the simultaneous pursuit of two contradictory logics: cooperation and competition. Nowadays, more and more direct competitors are involved in collaboration projects to bring substantial innovation or to consolidate their positions in the markets in which they operate. However, the pursuit of these two conflictual strategies simultaneously, the coopetition paradox, could create tensions at different levels. In this context, leaders detain a fundamental role. They should be able to integrate the paradox and adopt specific behaviors towards their teams and their partners in order to make the coopetition project successful. The current literature has extensively studied the role amongst leadership and conflict management but not much attention has been paid on this relationship in the coopetition context. Hence, this study aims to bring a substantial contribution and fill a relevant literature gap, giving also great managerial implications. It is focused on the leadership style and conflict management behavior that leaders need to adopt in order to manage conflicts between partners and within their own team. It also examines the role of trust and its influence on the choice of the most appropriate approach. This thesis focuses on the case study of three Norwegian insurance companies partnering to detect car insurance fraud. The project starts with a literature review and, afterward, the two Studies are presented. Study 1 involves the qualitative analysis of this project: the description of the case study, the interviews, and the hypotheses development. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with leaders and team members of the Scandinavian companies. This part has been fundamental to develop a set of predictions to be tested following some statistical analyses. Indeed, the second study of this thesis comprehends two survey experiments analyzed thanks to ANOVAs and regression methods. The findings disconfirmed my hypotheses. The transactional leadership style and the competition conflict management approach have been identified as the most effective behaviors to adopt in dealing with coopetition conflicts. Furthermore, trust does not influence the choice of that behavior, even if a key success factor in coopetition relationship. This project enriches the literature on the relationship between leadership and coopetition paradox and brings great empirical implications giving insights to future leaders and managers on the best approach to adopt to successfully deal with the coopetition strategy as well as great suggestions for future research.