| dc.description.abstract | Historically, rivals have interacted to achieve common goals, whereas previous research
shows examples of several types of competitor interactions. However, in the modern
corporate world, the perception of fierce competition has been more normalized, and
interactions between rivals pose a sensitivity to them. Thus, this paper examines how rival
organizations interact with each other and how different relationships can unfold in the
process, with the purpose of creating further understanding and knowledge on competitive
relations between organizations. The research uses boundary work as a theoretical framework
to investigate the phenomenon and applies the case of the Swedish football league,
Allsvenskan. The empirical data is based on both primary and secondary data connected to
the Swedish football league, Allsvenskan, gathered through interviews and documentary
analysis. The most common interactions between the football clubs were informal
collaboration and collaboration through a third-party organization. Competition-oriented
interactions were also found when the different football clubs actively tried to frame their
identity and highlight the differences between one another. Purely collaborative interactions
aligned with the framework were the rarest, with only two matching findings: collaboration
during crises. These results have two main contributions. Firstly, it shows the possibility for
organizations to simultaneously exercise multiple types of boundary work, which has not
been discussed previously. Secondly, it proves that boundary work is adequate as an analytic
lens of interactions since it explains how different interactions lead to different relationships. | en |
