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An Empirical Test of the Relational View in the Context of Corporate Venture Capital
Author(s) -
Weber Christiana,
Bauke Boris,
Raibulet Virgil
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
strategic entrepreneurship journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.061
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1932-443X
pISSN - 1932-4391
DOI - 10.1002/sej.1231
Subject(s) - relational capital , business , portfolio , context (archaeology) , corporate governance , industrial organization , knowledge management , relational view , venture capital , relation (database) , marketing , intellectual capital , finance , computer science , paleontology , database , biology
Research summary This study focuses on Dyer and Singh's (1998) relational view in the context of corporate venture capital (CVC) investors and their portfolio companies, who mutually strive for interorganizational rent generation. Aiming to better understand this relational rent‐generation process, our article entirely operationalizes and refines Dyer and Singh's (1998) model. While our findings attest strong explanatory power to the original model in the context of CVC investment relationships, they suggest the existence of additional relationships between the constructs of the relational view. Specifically, we identified relation‐specific assets as well as knowledge‐sharing routines as mediators between complementary resources and capabilities and relational rent. Managerial summary In this article, the relational view as an existing theory on interorganizational relationships is applied and tested using quantitative data in the context of corporate venture capital (CVC) investments. Our analysis confirms that relation‐specific assets and knowledge‐sharing routines, as well as complementary resources and capabilities, lead to relational rent. This is supernormal profit creation for both CVC investors and portfolio companies. The relationships are, however, not as straightforward as the original theory suggests, with complementary resources and capabilities being antecedents for knowledge‐sharing routines and relation‐specific assets which, subsequently, lead to the desired rent. Counterintuitively, informal self‐enforcing governance mechanisms (trust) appear to foster relationship satisfaction, but not necessarily create relational rent or immediate tangible benefits. Copyright © 2016 Strategic Management Society