Achieving Export Performance: Contribution of Relational Elements

In international operations relational elements can be useful through network ties to exploit global market opportunities and enhance relationships with foreign partners. Relational elements are known as irregular interactions of weak ties that obtain new information and to access to the various information sources. It also is as strong ties that characterize by regular and stronger social interactions, where can perceive more reliable information and transfer knowledge more effective for experiential learning. This exploratory study attempts to correlation between relational elements and export performance among Malaysian firms exporting to the nations around the Persian Gulf. The findings indicate that trust is ranked highest and is followed by favour and friendship. Trust is positively and significantly correlated with economic and non-economic measures of export performance. Favour is positively related with export performance (economic and non-economic) while it is significantly correlated with only two dimensions of non-economic measures of export performance. Friendship is positively related with export performance (economic and non-economic) and significantly correlated with one dimension of economic measures and one dimension of non-economic measures of export performance.