Competitive Advantage through Engagement
通过文献和媒体文章梳理，构建了客户参与和员工参与的多维度框架，并用120家公司的两期数据验证，发现两者均提升企业绩效，且客户参与作用更强，员工参与对客户参与的影响受授权、企业类型和行业性质调节。
The authors highlight the need for and develop a framework for engagement by reviewing the relevant literature and analyzing popular-press articles. They discuss the definitions of the focal constructs—customer engagement (CE) and employee engagement (EE)—in the engagement framework, capture these constructs’ multidimensionality, and develop and refine items for measuring CE and EE. They validate the proposed framework with data from 120 companies over two time periods, and they develop strategies to help firms raise their levels of CE and EE to improve performance. They also observe that the influence of EE on CE is moderated by employee empowerment, type of firm (business-to-business [B2B] vs. business-to-consumer [B2C]), and nature of industry (manufacturing vs. service); in particular, this effect is stronger for B2B (vs. B2C) firms and service (vs. manufacturing) firms. The authors find that although both CE and EE positively influence firm performance, the effect of CE on firm performance is stronger. Furthermore, the effect of CE and EE on performance is enhanced for B2B (vs. B2C) and for service (vs. manufacturing) firms.