Relational Capital and Financial Results: A Case Study

There is an increasingly major concern with the knowledge and what it can represent for companies, because knowledge has become the primary ingredient in everything we do. As a consequence, the intellectual capital that is the most important resource for the development of competitive advantages of the company and the raw material from which the financial results are obtained arises and develops, hence its study and understanding being important for everyone without exception. Since the intellectual capital consists of human capital, structural capital and relational capital, and that human capital embodies the knowledge, the talent and the experience of employees, the structural capital represents encoded knowledge bases that do not exist in the minds of employees, and the relational capital represents the knowledge embedded in the organizational value chain. And for that we aims to determine whether relational Capital is presented and valuated in a company working in the logistics sector, and if it has an impact on the financial performance. Considering this, we have developed a Case Study that utilises a pragmatic and unique, holistic and exploratory approach. Data collection was carried out mainly through interviews and observation centred on Relational Capital and on the financial performance, conducted on two elements from different levels of authority and responsibility within the company, a director and an operation employee. A Likert scale of 5 points was used, and the study concluded that both participants interviewed, shared a similar point of view about Relational Capital and the financial performance. It was also concluded that the company evaluated is relational Capital, in particular, the follow elements: the culture and the organizational characteristics had impact in the financial performance of a firm, and the company had a positive result over the years, although yields have stagnated recently, and expenses have increased due to the current international crisis. Consequently, it was concluded that in those companies, Relational Capital was valuated and the case study suggests that there is a relationship with financial performance.