The Impact of Contextual Factors on Improving the Relational Intangible Capital Related to the Supply Chain: An Empirical Analysis within the Tunisian Context

The relational intangible capital has become an important determinant of value creation in manufacturing. Hence, comes the importance of studying the factors that may affect this relational capital in the supply chain. The following research applies the contingency theory to try to improve our understanding of the factors that may explain the features improvement of relational capital with the suppliers. We have examined, particularly, the impact of the five following contingency factors: the perceived environmental uncertainty, the relational capital with suppliers, the generic cost leadership strategy, the organizational architecture and the company size on the improvement of the features of relational intangible capital with the suppliers. The results show that only the variables: perceived environmental uncertainty and the relational capital with suppliers have a positive and significant effect on the features improvement of relational intangible capital with the suppliers.