Friends with Benefits: How Collegial Collaboration Tempers Agonistic Competition among Craft Brewers

• In Event: 50220 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 5: Collaborations and Networks

Abstract

Competition tends to become more agonistic as density increases among firms. However, scholars have argued that an oppositional organizational identity among firms creates bonds of solidarity and discourages competition. Oppositional organizational identities occur when a number of small challenger firms contrast themselves against a large incumbent. This paper draws on qualitative interviews with 43 craft brewers as well as a dataset of 440 craft breweries participating in 766 formal collaborations between 2009 and 2020. I find that as density increases, oppositional organizational identity weakens, as firms recognize their peer challengers rather than large incumbents as competition. However, bonds of solidarity forged from norms and practices of collaboration temper the agonism of competition even in the face of increased density.

Author

• Paul-Brian McInerney, University of Illinois-Chicago