Competition on inter-organizational collaboration from an organizational-social-technical perspective

Benefiting from inter-organizational collaboration while remaining competitive are organizations' target in software industry nowadays. However, little is known about competition awareness and collaboration processes and practices in software-intensive organizations. This paper introduces the first step to understand the role and impact of competition on team collaboration in the context of inter-organizational software project. A case study was designed and initially performed. Initial findings revealed a set of propositions for future research. We found that collaboration initiates from technical coordination requirement and is influenced by technical, social and organizational factors. Meanwhile, competition comes from business strategy and competition awareness could negatively influence effectiveness of social-technical collaboration. Future works will focus on the mutual influence between competition and collaboration and role of global dispersion on this interaction.