Enterprise Competitive Advantage Relationship Intelligence

Technological innovation, marketing and management quality are the factors that generally define a company's competitive advantage. We thus end up forgetting that at the root of development is the fundamental resource of human intelligence.

In today's complex business realities, individual genius à la Schumpeter is no longer sufficient. Economic enterprise is a team effort, integrating non-overlapping and complementary skills (lawyers, marketing experts, economists, engineers...) to maximise the value of all those variables and make itself competitive. In the Charlot's assembly line in Modern Times, the production flow was based on simple tasks, relationships were of little use, in fact they were considered distracting and inefficient. Authority, control and the threat of sanction were enough to check that the worker tightened the bolt with 'scientific' timing. Everything changes in modern enterprise. The work of the Charlot is mainly done by machines, while communities of humans develop projects and strategies aimed at creating and innovating. The theoretical and empirical literature teaches that humans do their best when their intrinsic motivation is enhanced, or, conversely, the least possible to avoid being fired (quite quitters) when they are not motivated.

Cooperation and relationships between humans are therefore the true competitive resource of enterprises. In our empirical research on more than 4,000 enterprises of the Tagliacarne Institute survey (developed on the occasion of the National Festival of Civil Economy of 2-5 October, which has relational intelligence as its theme) we measure the relational intelligence of enterprises by breaking it down into internal (between the people who work in the company) and external (with other companies). Internal relational intelligence is obtained as a composite indicator of training, participation, work-life balance and employee relations, while external relational intelligence is in the company's ability to build relationships and mutually beneficial agreements with other companies.

The econometric analysis indicates a positive and significant impact of relational intelligence on employment, turnover and export expectations: 'external' relational intelligence increases the probability of an increase in employment of more than 3 % in 2024-25 by 10 %, the probability of an increase in exports by 3 % and an increase in turnover by 14 %. Internal' relational intelligence produces 4, 3 and 9 per cent higher effects on the same performance variables.

The study also identifies some transmission channels for this effect. Companies with greater relational intelligence have greater access to Transition 4.0 tax credits, invest more in the human capital of their employees and in energy saving production processes.