Bibliographical Review

Cooperate to compete successfully is a short book in Spanish that provides a precise definition of cooperation between companies. The authors explain what cooperation entails and how companies can increase their competitiveness through cooperative ties. For the authors, cooperation is an intelligent response that aspires to increase competitiveness while facing changes.

The book consists of five chapters. The first, introductory chapter provides the founding base of the other four, the order of the contents and the way in which the book will achieve its objective and explain the aspects that substantially affect the competitiveness of companies.

The first chapter, Structure of the work, addresses the scenarios that encourage companies to cooperate in the contexts in which they need to adapt to the environment.

Determinants and implications (complexity, competitiveness and development) is the second chapter. It is dedicated to the theoretical concepts of cooperation. The authors clarify that approaching cooperation from a scientific perspective leads in practice to a better competitive advantage. The complexity of reality requires decision makers to have a better understanding, a long-term vision and the multiple realities’ standpoint.

Cooperation, by itself, is not a guarantee of increased competitiveness. It is the reason why the authors have included as the third chapter The decision to cooperate . Cooperation is a rational act that requires assessing and determining what will be created together, how and how much will be shared, all that in order to achieve jointly better results. The authors take as key elements: transaction costs, acts of opportunism and failure to cooperate (abandonment). The vision of these breaks with the romanticism and ideology that usually accompanies the term cooperation . It gives the reader a more realistic vision, focused on what reality the company faces when deciding between cooperating or competing with other economic agents ( ^{Cabanelas, Lorenzo & Liste, 2011} ; ^{González, 2012} , ²⁰²¹ ; ^{Cabanelas, 2019} )

The fourth chapter, Design of cooperation , exposes to the reader the forms that cooperation can take as the result of negotiation and the interests of the stakeholders. The contractual form responds to a complex interpretation of the changing environment of each of the parties involved, plus the expectations of foreseeable and unpredictable changes.

The implementation of cooperation: instruments is the fifth and final chapter. In this part, the contractual forms of cooperation are put forward, presenting the legal environment and its role in closing and adjusting the cooperation.

The content and development of the work contributes to the objective stated by the authors, that is, explaining to the reader the aspects of cooperation that substantially affect the competitiveness of companies. It is a book that condenses many aspects and leaves the reader with the interest of delving further into the details of the rational act of cooperating, its design as well as the contractual forms of cooperation.