This study uncovers the ignored role of institutional environment for marketing strategy and customer relationship management. Hypothesis tests in a sample of Chinese firms find support that channel networking strengthens the customer orientation-customer trust/commitmentfirm performance (CTP) causal chain. In addition, the results show that government networking moderates this chain in a non-linear fashion. The CTP linkages are most salient when the firm develops a moderate level, rather than a high or low level of networking ties with government agencies.

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The authors use the resource-based view of the firm to frame the direct, relative, and synergistic effects of three firm relational resources (i.e., customer relationships, business-partner social capital, and governing-agency social capital) on firm performance (strategic and financial) in a sample of 262 businesses that operate in metropolitan Chinese cities. Although the findings indicate that all three relational resources enhance performance, they also indicate that customer relationships are the primary drivers of strategic and financial performance and that business partnerships and governing-agency social capital have a synergistic influence. In addition, the results indicate that the influences of these resources are moderated by domestic or international firm ownership. The authors discuss the implications for academics and practitioners.In today's business environment, relational resources, such as customer relationships (Bendapudi and Berry 1997; Srivastava, Fahey, and Christensen 2001) and social capital (i.e., an intangible asset that is created through social relations that can be leveraged to facilitate action and achieve and sustain a competitive advantage) with business partners and governing agencies (Gulati and Gargiulo 1999;Oliver 1990;Peng and Luo 2000), are viewed as strategic resources. However, despite the growing empirical and theoretical research on customer relationships and social capital, significant gaps appear in the literature. First, whereas researchers have identified customer relationships and social capital as important firm relational resources, scholars have not explored their influences relative to one another, most notably because of their development in divergent research streams. The lack of a relative perspective is a noteworthy limitation, given that differences in performance effects could have substantial theoretical and managerial implications. Because the developments of customer relationships and social capital are costly strategic initiatives, understanding the relative influence of each provides firms with greater strategic direction. Second, researchers have yet to explore the synergistic effects of social capital resources. As such, it is unclear whether the effects of business-partner and governingagency social capital are most effective when developed individually or jointly. Third, little is known about the moderating influence of firm-ownership structure (i.e., domestic