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Building on a business network perspective, the paper addresses the following question: Why do firms move between cooperation and competition in the context of high-tech industry? Hence, the purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the complex cooperation–competition interplay between actors in a business network.

A single case study within the information and communication technology industry is undertaken and illustrates the cooperation–competition interplay in projects of technology.

The authors discuss the implications of interdependence on relationship dynamics. The main argument is that business relationships survive despite periods of competition if interdependence is high. Thus, firms move between a state of cooperation and a state of competition within business relationships, rather than ending the relationships when starting to compete.

This study suggests that managers need to pay attention to how different degrees of interdependence lead firms to be embedded in cooperative or competitive forms of relationships.

The paper contributes to the ongoing debate about cooperation, competition and coopetition within international business and industrial marketing literature. An interesting aspect in the paper is the cooperation–competition interplay, which is associated with positioning. A centrally positioned actor will choose who to bring into the partnership, with positioning concomitantly changing from project to project. The willingness of being a central actor, i.e. a project leader, places traditional buyer–supplier partners in competition. Thus, cooperation and/or competition becomes contextual.

This paper aims to explore the role of heuristics in the reassessment of relationship events and how it influences perceptions of commitment, fairness and relationship value. It answers the question of how heuristics interrelate with decision-makers’ evolving interpretations of commitment, fairness and relationship value in a specific buyer-supplier relationship.

This paper presents data from a longitudinal study of an evolving buyer–supplier relationship involving a multinational supplier of fast-moving consumer goods and a medium-sized and highly specialized supplier. It analyzes qualitative data about the use of heuristics in buyer–supplier relationships, and it is based on evidence collected from interviews, presentations, meetings and secondary data.

This paper shows that a buyer’s unexpected behavior can lead to a reassessment of commitment, fairness and relationship value. Heuristics can delay relationship reassessments, however. The case shows that heuristics have a preserving quality and that the effect of transformative events only slowly changes the perception of the value of the relationship. In this change process, the link between commitment, perceived fairness and heuristics is crucial.

This paper contributes to research on the relationship between buyer–supplier relationships and heuristics. In particular, the paper contributes to the understanding of how relational events in a buyer-supplier relationship change the commitment and perception of fairness, and how heuristics change accordingly. On a more overarching level, the study contributes to our understanding of business relationship dynamics.

Firms regularly have to handle business-related market changes on the market, such as new market entrants, increased competition, changing prices and changing demand. However, firms active on a market subject to political interventions, resulting in changes of the market, also have to handle different support systems with subsidies, taxes, regulations, etc. As these interventions affect both firms and customers, it is important for firms to adapt to them, but if they continue to change, firms also need to adapt to changing conditions. The purpose of the paper is to study how firms handle continuous market changes and shifting governmental interventions through market–political ambidexterity.

Based on a qualitative approach, 13 in-depth interviews focusing on how firms handle market changes and political interventions over time were conducted during two time periods. The data was coded in several steps, using systematic combining.

The empirical results reveal that firm size is crucial in developing market–political ambidexterity; small firms lack the resources needed to handle all changes in an ambidextrous way. Changes on the market require firms to be active, whereas changes of the market, e.g. interventions, require internal stability in the firms. Changes on the market are easier to handle, wherefore there seems to be a need for firms to develop political exploration and exploitation activities related to market–political ambidexterity.

This study contributes to industrial marketing by increasing our understanding of how SMEs handle the simultaneous but sometimes contradicting demands from market changes and political interventions by developing market–political ambidexterity.

Extant research supports the importance of dynamic managerial capabilities in capturing managers’ individual roles in organisations’ adjustments to change. This paper develops a multidimensional scale for measuring dynamic managerial capabilities consisting of sensing, seizing and reconfiguration capacities that mediate between managers’ affective states and their firms’ performance.

The scale is validated in a survey-based study among 204 managers in companies in the United States of America (USA). We applied a multiple regression model (a triple mediation) using each of DMCs’ three dimensions to test the effects of managers’ affective states on their firms’ performance.

The multidimensional construct of DMCs adds about 15 % of variance explained to a firm’s performance, as perceived by its managers. So managers’ affective states do have an impact on DMCs and, later, on their firms’ performance.

We show the impact of negative and positive affect on DMCs. We also show that DMCs’ three dimensions should be treated in a formative manner that advances discussion on DMCs and their role in a firm’s performance.

Understanding managers’ affective states helps incorporate “hot cognition” into firms’ strategising processes. Although both positive and negative emotions can be helpful, depending on the situation, positive affect is generally more valuable than negative affect as it relates to a firm’s performance.

Our work proposes measuring DMCs based on Teece’s (2007) disaggregation of DMCs into sensing, seizing and reconfiguration capacities. We approach each of these dimensions separately and show that managers’ affective states influence each dimension differently.