抄録
An inter-organizational community of practice (CoP) consisting of employees
of multiple organizations plays important roles in individual and organizational
learning. However, past studies have mainly focused on CoPs involving organizations
in cooperative relationships, without sufficient focus on those involving
competitors. To address this problem, we examined a CoP formed by employees
of competing Japanese airlines, referencing to the theory of “coopetition,”
a situation where organizations simultaneously compete and cooperate. Semistructured
interviews were conducted with 22 informants, supplemented by
secondary data and observations of the CoP. The modified grounded theory approach
was employed to analyze the data. As a result, we found that the airlines
established a cooperative relationship that resulted from the common threat
they faced, the similarity in tasks they held, and the structure in which one’s cooperative
behavior toward the others tended to improve benefits for their own
organization. It was also found that the participants’ cooperative behaviors were
facilitated further by the rareness and uncertainty of knowledge needed for their
tasks. In addition, potential conflicts were mitigated by the separation of competition
and cooperation, and by the close business relationship among them.
