Handbook of Management Scales/Relational capital

Relational capital (alpha = 0.83)

Description

A previously multi-item 7-point scale was used. It was further pretested with six logistics researchers and six executive managers of logistics service providers to ensure face validity.

Definition

Relational capital involves an atmosphere of forbearance, respect and balanced reciprocity (Wallenburg & Raue, 2011) and creates a mutual confidence that no party will exploit the others’ vulnerabilities even if there is such opportunity (Kale et al., 2000).

Items

The cooperation is characterized by…

• …close personal interaction.
• …personal friendship.
• …mutual trust.
• …high reciprocity.

Source

• Raue, J.S. & Wieland, A. (2015): The Interplay of Different Types of Governance in Horizontal Cooperations. The International Journal of Logistics Management, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 401–423

Comments

With values above 5, the mean values of the first and third items were a bit too high. Here, words like "very" or "strong" could be added in front of these items to shift their mean values towards 4.

Related Scales

• Trust (and other scales mentioned there)