Coopetition Strategies Of International Joint Ventures For High-speed Railway Projects

As a fast,convenient,and green transportation mode of transportation,high-speed railway(HSR)has attracted the attention of many countries to initiate more and more HSR plans.However,the HSR industry is an integrated system that includes three major bodies: civil engineering enterprises,manufacturing enterprises and operation enterprises,so HSR contractors often work in the mode of international joint ventures(IJVs)to meet the owner’s requirements.There is not only competition among members of IJVs,but also cooperation.This study aims to investigate the coopetition strategies of IJVs for HSR projects and explore the critical success factors(CSFs)for the coopetition strategies of IJVs in HSR projects and the formation paths.This paper would provide the members of IJVs with guidance to understand the nature of the coopetition strategies so that they can investigate their current situations for optimizing the coopetition strategies.Through the summary and sorting out of the literatures,this paper analyzed the current situation and shortcomings of the coopetition in IJVs for HSR projects,and set the objectives of this study,which lays the foundation for the following analysis.Firstly,the coopetition strategy framework was established and verified.A threestage text data collection strategy was applied.At Stage 1,the text data were collected through the nine rounds of interviews,and the 12 international HSR projects were identified as the targets.At Stage 2,detailed information on the targeted HSR projects was further supplemented by E-mail and telephone interviews to collect information for the coopetition strategies.At Stage 3,retrieve valuable information for the coopetition strategies from the online resources to supplement the text data of the targeted 12 international HSR projects.Eventually,all the information was organized into text materials,resulting in over 30,000 words of text data.The grounded theory was performed to identify 16 coopetition strategies,which were further divided into four categories,namely relationship strategy,regulatory strategy,and exchange strategy,and control strategy.The coopetition strategies questionnaire was designed on the base of the results of the grounded theory.A pilot survey was conducted with five experts with more than 15 years of experience in HSR projects to examine and validate the initial list of the coopetition strategies,and to pretest the fitness and intelligibility of the questionnaire.In addition,the full version of the questionnaire was undertaken with113 professionals who had experienced more than one HSR project in the overseas market and the confirmatory factor analysis was performed to verify the coopetition strategy framework.The analysis results confirmed the framework because each indicator met the requirements.Secondly,in based of a comprehensive literature review and the pilot study with five industry experts,the 22 critical success factors were identified and packaged into six groups covering the three levels(including macro,firm,and project levels).Meanwhile,the formation paths amongst the six groups were proposed.A questionnaire survey was performed with 210 practitioners experienced in IJVs in HSR projects to assess the significance of the factors,and 113 valid questionnaires were received.By applying partial least-squares structural equation modeling technology,the 22 critical success factors,the grouping,and the nine formation paths were verified,thus the path model of critical success factors for the coopetition strategy of IJVs in HSR projects was finally established.Finally,the coopetition strategies were further divided into two categories: the coopetition-capability oriented strategies,and the coopetition-relationship oriented strategies,and the recommendations of the improvement of coopetition relationship and capability were put forward from different levels.Then,according to the above results,the recommendations about the coopetition strategies of IJVs in HSR projects were put forward from the pre-project phase,the implementation phase,and the postproject phase,and through multiple cases of international HSR projects to verify the overall coopetition strategies,which can guide the members of IJVs in HSR projects to implement coopetition strategies.