Social Capital and Vertical Dyadic Relationships: some empirical inquiries about effectiveness

Rapidly changing competitive environments are forcing firms to seek more creative and flexible means to manage the competition. Many firms have responded to these challenges by building collaborative relationships with customers and suppliers. In business to business settings, in particular, vertical dyadic relationships between suppliers and their customers are of paramount interest. Drawing on a strategic relational perspective, we adopt an embeddedness view, aiming at understanding the effectiveness of these vertical partnerships. In particular, by focusing on the network social aspects, we argue that the social ties among suppliers and customers shape economic action by creating and giving access to unique opportunities. We consider social capital as a source of value, which allow a firm’s effectiveness to occur, when social capital is inserted in an economic relationship. Therefore, we suppose that the firm’s advantages are often related not only to the value of its network of relations, but above all to its capability of developing valuable social networks.