Relational Capital and Open Innovation – in Search of Interdependencies

The article raises the matter of open innovation significance, with special stress put in the crowdsourcing concept in the context of relational capital. It is claimed that effective operation of an organization is decided by the ability of development and maintenance of relationships with the environment. It is expressed by various relationships, interdependencies and mutual influences exerted by entities. This becomes a basis for the relational capital, which arises from potential collected and generated from cooperation and resources of all involved parties. Creation and development of relational capital is considerably brought down to creation of conditions, which would enable to initiate, shape, develop and maintain relationships between members of a given organization, and between the organization and subjects from its surrounding. It is not present independently, but in relation to human (capital of managers, employees) and structural capital, as a component of the intellectual capital. The relational capital emerges as a result of well-thought actions - it depends on strategic decisions and organized actions. Literature of the subject shows on one hand that the relationships contribute to creation of innovations, but on the other they also support development of relational capital. Purpose of the article is to find out the interdependencies between the relational capital and open innovation. The starting point in the undertaken deliberations is a statement that emergence of relational capital should be initiated with proper actions. The performed literature review allowed not only to present more details about the previous works, but also to demonstrate the significance of actions related with open innovations in the context of the relational capital development.