Regulator driven cooperation of competing companies - a case study

The importance of cooperation as a part of development process has increased during last decades. The complexity of Information Systems has grown so much that it has become more difficult for a single organization to manage all aspects and stages of Information System development. In some cases, there is a need for implementing software projects with cooperation of different organizations. There might be several motivations for this, for example to reach market or regulator driven goals. This case study discusses regulator driven cooperation between three competing companies in Finland. While the companies are competitors on the Telecommunication markets in Finland, they worked in cooperation for common goals. The research was carried out by using two process models. A social process model developed by Newman and Robey with later addition by Heiskanen demonstrated fruitfulness of regulator driven cooperation. A framework developed by Ring and Van de Ven was useful when evaluating the development of cooperation not only at interorganisational level but also at intraorganisational level.