The Relational Capital as a key factor for a Company's success: general insight

Business system, particularly its basic components, has been widely reconsidered. It used to be a whole of material elements, it is now a system of visible and invisible elements. Thanks to the rise of knowledge economy, competitive modern businesses create value by stressing specific strategic invisible assets. More specifically, among all the business immaterial components, the one that has gained more popularity is the intellectual capital. It is based on three extremely important concepts: human capital, structural capital and relational capital. The importance of each and every of these concepts multiplies when you consider them all together. This essay, though, aims to analyze one of these three components as the success component of a business: the relational capital. It represents the interaction and the integration between businesses and their referential environment when specific exchanges – even financial ones - take place. These exchanges help keep businesses alive. The relational capital originates from the value of the relationships that exist between companies and their stakeholders. This essay specifically analyses the relational capital by identifying three different areas: the kind of contractual relationship between companies and their stakeholders; the synergies, which derive from collaborations between companies; the sharing of company values, such as reputation, image, satisfaction, trust and loyalty marketing. Relational capital is examined through the analyses of: - relationships settled in time with defined roles, such as the relationships between companies and their clients, providers, stakeholders and referents; - collaborations with other companies, which often become participation relations or proper contracts; - the companies themselves, which share specific value with the external environment, thus help create a connection between personal values and company values. For instance, reputation, image, trust, satisfaction and loyalty marketing. Therefore, it is necessary to highlight that rich and qualified relational resources not only help businesses gain a strong competitive differential on the market, but also generate wealth in the long term. As a result, research is as follows: what is the relational capital? What elements are necessary in order to consider the relational capital a strategic business factor?