The Cycle of Erosion: How Relational Work Incongruence Drives Weaker Persistent Adversity Adjustment

Le résumé fourni par la source

Employing an inductive, qualitative case study of a thirty-year-old Chinese catering firm, this research examines how small service firms navigate persistent adversity through relational work. Moving beyond existing literature that frequently examine customer-oriented and employee-oriented relational work as separate pathways, we induce a process model revealing how managerial cognition focused on external relational salience triggers a state of relational work incongruence. This incongruence precipitates a relational capital erosion cycle where internal failures eventually permeate the external service interface and undermine organizational adjustment. This study makes three theoretical contributions. First, we extend relational work theory by identifying domain incongruence as a critical antecedent of organizational failure. Second, we advance stakeholder theory by uncovering a sacrificial logic that leads to systemic value destruction under extreme resource constraints. Finally, we redefine resilience in the context of persistent adversity by identifying a paradox wherein the depletion of internal relational structures for short-term survival forfeits the capacity for long-term transformation.

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