Organizational Culture and Relationship Skills

Abstract

In this paper we argue that organizational culture is an important factor influencing relationship skills, defined as a firm’s ability and behavioral tendency to actively cultivate and manage its ties with other firms. Testing our model on a sample of 102 inter-firm relations, we find that firms with organizational cultures characterized by an orientation towards stability and predictability, a positive orientation towards innovation, and not characterized by a strong focus on immediate results, score high on relationship skills. Relationship skills, in turn, positively affect the perceived relationship performance.