Measuring firm-employee relationship strength

Abstract

This article reports the findings from an assessment of a measure used to determine levels of firm-employee relationship strength. The measure utilized was originally designed to measure relationship strength in industrial buyer-supplier relationships. The purpose was to determine if this scale could be adapted to measure firm-employee relationship strength. A secondary purpose was to determine if it were possible to begin to move towards developing a generalized measure of relationship strength for use in various relationship marketing situations, through this initial adaptation and application of a measure from one relationship to another. Support was found for a single factor firm-employee relationship strength construct. Convergent validity was also established. The results provide support for developing a generalisable measure of relationship strength for different marketing relationships. The assessed measure is considered useful as an overall indication of the strength level of a marketing relationship. Future research should explore a more detailed and in-depth measure of relationship strength and also test the generalisability of the scale for measuring other marketing relationships, for example employee-customer relationships, alliance partners, etc.