Relational capital and strategic orientations as antecedents of innovation: evidence from Mexican SMEs

Abstract

Questions "Where does innovation initiate in a company?" and "How can a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) leverage its different resources to enhance its innovation capabilities to outperform its competitors?" remain unanswered to date. Accordingly, this study examined the relationship between the firm's relational capital and fundamental strategic orientations that a firm can adopt and how these different orientations affect innovation and organizational performance. The target sample included 360 Mexican SMEs who completed a pen-and-pencil questionnaire conducted at the four main cities of this country. Structural equation modeling was performed, and results revealed a strong positive effect of relational capital over all four strategic orientations considered in this study. However, mixed findings of strategic orientations and innovation were obtained. Although market and entrepreneurial orientation positively influenced innovation, a negative relationship was found between learning orientation and innovation and a nonsignificant relationship between technology orientation and innovation. As expected, innovation positively influenced the performance of SMEs. This study offers essential academic contributions and interesting managerial insights to improve performance using relational capital through innovation and strategic orientations. Therefore, we propose relational capital as an underexploited resource and a source of innovation for SMEs.

An Empirical Study of Dynamic Capability: Leveraging The Roles of Virtual Leadership and Relational Capital

“…Conversely, technology affects a leader in carrying out his functions in management. This agrees with studies by Comer (2023) and Ramírez-Solis et al (2022), where leaders need to control technological capabilities by encouraging external access to members of the organization to gain insights for solutions to problems.…”

Knowledge assets, innovation ambidexterity and firm performance in knowledge-intensive companies

“…Accordingly, human capital is defined as the sum of knowledge, wisdom, skills and experiences of all members of an organization; structural capital refers to the knowledge embedded in a company's nonhuman resources, such as databases and servers (Edvinsson and Malone, 1997;Bontis, 1998Bontis, , 2001; and structural capital refers to the management processes, collaboration mechanisms, organizational culture and structure and reward systems that enables the members of the intended organization to take full advantage of the existing knowledge assets (Lee and Choi, 2003;Gold et al, 2001). Finally, relational capital creates knowledge concerning a company's channels and networks, which consist of external parties, including customers, distributors, competitors, suppliers and other relevant entities (Roos and Roos, 1997;Ramı ´rez-Solis et al, 2022).…”

Individual characteristics and innovation performance in SMEs: Moderating role of physiological capital

“…Researchers prefer to keep the word "affective commitment" for emotional connection to the organisation in order to make clear differences between the logical, affective, and evaluating aspects of personal identity (Hilmiyanti & Kusumastuti, 2021;Khattak, 2022). Researchers expanded on Odoardi et al (2019);Purwanto, Asbari, Hartuti, Setiana, and Fahmi (2021);Ramírez-Solis et al (2022); Shahzad et al (2019) identification of two basic pleasant feelings groupings: "joy" (i.e., happiness resulting from the organisation as a cultural construct) and "love" (i.e., feelings appeal or aversion towards the organisation as a social grouping), which serve as the foundation for the recognition of basic level interpersonal designs. Thus according evaluation theories of emotions Nousopoulou et al (2022), delight and appreciate are generated by various assessments of one's position and have different action propensities and ability to respond.…”

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