The Roles of satisfaction, trust and commitment in value-creation in strategic networks

Firms’ social capital can profoundly be regarded as a dynamic capability which, through yielding equifinal idiosyncratic patterns of ties and interactions among the participating nodes, results in transaction efficiency as well as maximization of relational rents for the firms which are embedded in an innovative web of relationships. In this paper, the authors have presented an integrated explanation for the nature and interrelationships among three important relational constructs while elaborating upon their roles in the value-creation as well as pie-sharing in strategic networks. It is postulated that the successive realization of mutually beneficent outcomes creates satisfaction among the participating nodes of a strategic network, which in turn fosters the process-based trust that ultimately results in an increased inter-organizational commitment. The culmination of such a commitment is an important precursor to the value-creation in collaborative structural arrangements like joint ventures, franchises, strategic alliances etc.