Social capital, customer service orientation and creativity in retail stores

This paper argues that the structural, relational and cognitive dimensions of social capital within retail stores provide an insight into the antecedents of customer service orientation and store creativity. These three dimensions enhance a customer service orientation as a result of increased knowledge sharing, creation of information channels, and the facilitation of cooperative behavior. Secondly, because these factors foster the process of resource exchange and combination, they are also associated with an increased level of store creativity. Indeed, for a high level of creativity to take place at the store level, knowledge has to be shared and combined in an effective manner. Our proposed model is tested on a sample of 112 stores within a large national retail chain. We find partial support for our hypothesized model. (C) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.