Antecedents and consequences of co-opetition strategies in small and medium-sized accounting agencies

As the co-opetition strategy is frequently adopted by small and medium-sized accounting agencies, the main purpose of this study is to discuss the antecedents and impact of the adoption of the co-opetition strategy from the viewpoint of the resource-based theory. This study distributed questionnaires to CPAs (Certified Public Accountant) of small and medium-sized accounting agencies, and recovered 225 valid questionnaires for analysis. This study applied the confirmatory factor analysis to test the intrinsic quality of the measurement model, the structural equation modeling in testing the research hypotheses, and cluster analysis in distinguishing the co-opetition strategy types. The empirical results suggest that expertise heterogeneity positively affects competition strategy, and expertise complementarity positively affects the cooperation strategy. Finally, this study presents the resource and co-opetition strategy relationship matrix in order to provide small and medium-sized accounting agencies with reference for practical business operations.