Learning Through Co-opetition: How Knowledge Sharing Builds Supply Chain Resilience

This study explores how knowledge sharing among competing firms (co-opetition) influences risk management and enhances supply chain resilience. Grounded in organizational learning theory, the study examines how co-opetition enhances firms' visibility into the emerging challenges of tomorrow's world, enabling proactive risk management that can strengthen both organizational and supply chain resilience. Interviews were conducted with 33 trucking industry executives and other key participants to uncover insights into how these interactions affect their ability to maintain adequate, timely supply chain operations. These insights reveal three mechanism-driven processes: knowledge seeking, third-party bridging, and knowledge guarding. These linked behaviors support and enable distinct resilience capacities. The supply chain resilience literature is advanced by these findings that reveal how co-opetition enables firms to gain and use knowledge to improve risk management and organizational resilience. The findings also offer insights into how resilience-building and disruption-mitigation strategies become institutionalized across supply chain stakeholders. This research offers practical insights for managers on the importance of leveraging co-opetition to enhance performance while maintaining operational continuity.