Virtual Relational Capital for Business Development: A Structured Literature Review and Research Agenda

Digitalization has brought new opportunities for companies to employ new tools for business development. Moreover, digitalization has allowed the creation of new ways for organizations to manage their relations in a virtual way, leading to a “virtual relational capital.” The COVID-19 pandemic has further enhanced such a process. The chapter aims to deepen the concept and role of virtual relations in shaping the new relational capital, and how it can contribute to business development by employing a structured literature review of the most recent literature ranked on the Scopus. Twenty papers were analyzed through a research framework to assess them under different lenses. Even if the selected sample is limited, some exciting results emerge. Findings underline the presence of multiple research methodologies (from qualitative investigations based on case studies and interviews to surveys, from laboratory experiments to literature reviews) conducted in several countries around the globe. Several stakeholders are engaged in and benefit from such relations, including individuals but also institutions and other groups, like virtual communities. Several advantages are recognized, of both social and economic types. Even if some barriers are mentioned in the use of such technologies, virtual relations seem to provide companies with new exciting and profitable ways to engage their stakeholders, opening up to new opportunities and business models.