Horizontal Alliances and Competitive Aggressiveness:

To assess the effects of co-opetition—simultaneous competition and collaboration—on competitive aggressiveness, this article relates one aspect of embeddedness—tie strength—to the volume and complexity of a firm’s competitive actions. Findings from our study of firms in the U.S. software industry suggest that strong ties increase the volume and complexity of competitive actions. Results also suggest that action volume is negatively related to the interaction between tie strength and both multimarket contact and resource similarity. However, results show that neither resource similarity nor multimarket contact did have direct or moderating effects on the relationship between tie strength and action complexity. Keywords competition, collaboration, competitive aggressiveness In recent years, strategy researchers have paid increasing attention to understanding the competitive actions taken by firms (Chen, 1996; Ferrier, 2001; Grimm & Smith, 1997). However, significant gaps in our understanding of competitive behavior persist. One particularly prominent gap is the impact of a firm’s interorganizational linkages on its competitive actions. Compared with how industry and firm characteristics affect competitive actions, the effects of a firm’s relationships with other firms have received little attention (Chen, 1996; Gnyawali, He, & Madhavan, 2006; Gnyawali & Madhavan, 2001). It is important to fill this gap in the literature because a firm is embedded in many cooperative relationships, the most important of which are termed strategic alliances. These alliances often provide resources, beyond those available from internal sources alone, which enable a firm to take competitiv