How Do Business Can Improve Quality of Relational Capital?

Relational Capital Of Organization:

“Relationships should help you, not hurt you. Surround yourself with people who reflect the person you want to be.”

Relational capital is defined as “all relationships — market relationships, power relationships and cooperation — established between firms, institutions and people, which stem from a strong sense of belonging.”

It is defined as the combination of all relations that the company has with all the agents, including customers, suppliers, shareholders, etc. If a firm establish long-term relations with these agents, their ability to capture value from these relations will be increased. This means the value of the company may increase. Relational capital refers to the value of the company’s relationships with the individuals and organizations with whom it performs its activity

The digital relational capital of a modern organization:

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has been about the magnificent explosion of technology — technology that inclusively divides, unites and creates connectedness of unknown proportions over the whole planet and beyond. The internet has become a digital infrastructure that can accommodate a high level of competition and is capable of influencing the way an organization is doing business through improved communication and connectivity tools.

The levels of connectedness, especially relational capital, also include more transparent and expanded knowledge in world matters, nature and its evolution in all known forms. The changes are manifesting beautifully before our eyes, in real time. Historically, these worldly changes took place “somewhere else” and were mostly unnoticeable over a gradual period of time.

Relation Capital and transparency in information and knowledge

We each, as individuals, are also a part of the evolution of business, and the planet. With this connectedness comes access to much transparency in information and knowledge; any of us with access to Wi-Fi and Professor Google can no longer plead ignorance. Ignorance is no longer bliss; it is now a conscious choice. We choose to connect and engage using technology, or we don’t. We choose to open our minds to the changes and the new possibilities within the changes, or we don’t. We choose to build relationships that mutually enhance collaboration and business, or we don’t.

The stakeholder of relational capital

Fruits of Relational Capital for the Organization:

Equality in empowerment
Morale and appetite for new business
Health and wellness
Innovation and invention

How to measure Relational Capital:

To measure the value of an intangible as relational capital is not that easy and intuitive as maybe measuring sales. But several approaches exit to measure the value and also the impact for the business:

Functionality of Customer Relationship: Customer feedback
Customer Feedback: Customer satisfaction survey
Customer Loyalty: Frequency of orders
Brand reputation and knowledge: Market research
Communication: Marketing investments
Quality of supplier relationship: Delivery time
Reputation of Company: Amount of positive communication from all communication

Steps to Improve Relational Capital:

Tagged Relation Capital. Knowledge Economy