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• Choose between a competitive and a cooperative kind of strategy. As mentioned
above, cooperative strategies focus on gaining an advantage through
collaboration with others. The different cooperative strategies mostly vary
through the degree of dependencies and ‘closeness’ between the partners. The
examples below illustrate the possible cooperative strategy options as displayed
in figure 107:
– Collusion (= secret agreement) – is the active cooperation of companies
within an industry to reduce output and raise prices in order to get
around the economic law of supply and demand. It does not necessarily
imply illegal agreements between the entities. The underlying agreement
is not common knowledge to the public and therefore provides an advantage.
A cartel is a more transparent and open version of an agreement. It
is a consortium of independent partners formed to limit competition by
controlling the production and distribution of a product or service.