Coopetition between French healthcare providers: an analysis in terms of proximity

Abstract

Despite an ever-increasing literature on coopetition, it does not address the question of the territory and its impact on coopetitive relations between the actors who live there. Our work focuses on French healthcare providers in the cancer treatment field on a local area. To qualify the territory, we use the five dimensions of Boschma’s proximity – cognitive, organisational, social, institutional and geographical – to analyse the coopetition at work in the studied health area. Our work shows that the territory acts as a catalyst for coopetition, and that, in reverse, the coopetitive relationships developed between the actors activate the different dimensions of proximity and thus make the territory exists.