Relational Contracts and Organizational Capabilities
提出，具有竞争优势的组织能力往往依赖于关系合同（即由未来预期维持的非正式协议），而这类合同难以复制的原因在于需要同时解决可信性和清晰性问题，且清晰性可能随时间缓慢发展并与可信性复杂互动。
A large literature identifies unique organizational capabilities as a potent source of competitive advantage, yet our knowledge of why capabilities fail to diffuse more rapidly—particularly in situations in which competitors apparently have strong incentives to adopt them and a well-developed understanding of how they work—remains incomplete. In this paper we suggest that competitively significant capabilities often rest on managerial practices that in turn rely on relational contracts (i.e., informal agreements sustained by the shadow of the future). We argue that one of the reasons these practices may be difficult to copy is that effective relational contracts must solve the twin problems of credibility and clarity and that although credibility might, in principle, be instantly acquired, clarity may take time to develop and may interact with credibility in complex ways so that relational contracts may often be difficult to build.