Conceptualizing a relationship management capability

The call for marketing practitioners and academics alike to move relationship marketing’s dyadic perspective into a multi-firm network context is building momentum. As network forms of organizing work expand, organizations will need to build their capability to leverage not only their customer assets but also the value-creating knowledge and innovation assets spanning multiple relationships within their business network form. Drawing on theories of evolutionary economics, resource advantage, organizational learning, and organizational capabilities, a model of a relationship management capability is conceptualized. The relationship management capability, combining both functional and integrative capabilities, is represented through second order constructs of relationship infrastructure capability, relationship learning capability and relationship behavioral capability.