In management, the relational view by
Jeffrey H. Dyer
Jeffrey may refer to:
* Jeffrey (name), including a list of people with the name
* ''Jeffrey'' (1995 film), a 1995 film by Paul Rudnick, based on Rudnick's play of the same name
* ''Jeffrey'' (2016 film), a 2016 Dominican Republic documentary film
...
and
Harbir Singh
Harbir Singh is an American economist, currently the Co-Director, Mack Institute for Innovation Management and Mack Professor of Management at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and formerly the Edward H. Bowman Professor, from 1999 ...
is a theory for considering networks and dyads of firms as the unit of analysis to explain relational rents, i.e., superior individual firm performance generated within that network/dyad.
[Dyer, J.H., Singh, H. (1998): The relational view: Cooperative strategy and sources of interorganizational competitive advantage. Academy of Management Review, Vol. 23, pp. 660–679.] This view has later been extended by Lavie (2006).
Comparison to other theories
The relational view supplements existing views. While the
industry structure view
Industry may refer to:
Economics
* Industry (economics), a generally categorized branch of economic activity
* Industry (manufacturing), a specific branch of economic activity, typically in factories with machinery
* The wider industrial sector ...
explains superior returns with a firm's membership in an industry with specific structural characteristics, and the
resource-based view The resource-based view (RBV) is a managerial framework used to determine the strategic resources a firm can exploit to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.
Barney's 1991 article "Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage" is widely ...
explains superior returns with firm heterogeneity,
[Barney, J.B. (1991): Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management, Vol. 17, pp. 99-120.] the relational view argues that idiosyncratic interfirm linkages are a source of relational rents.
Relational rents
Dyer and Singh define a relational rent as "a supernormal profit jointly generated in an exchange relationship that cannot be generated by either firm in isolation and can only be created through the joint idiosyncratic contributions of the specific alliance partners".
The achievement of rents is subject to relational risk.
Later research suggested companies adopt a relational strategic orientation and design
strategies to generate and extract relational rents.
Sources of relational rents
Dyer and Singh propose four sources of relational rents:
#relation-specific assets,
#knowledge-sharing routines,
#complementary resources/capabilities, and
#effective governance.
References
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Business terms
Strategic management
Supply chain management
Management theory