Stakeholder Management and Resource Complementarities: Firm Performance amid Systemic Crises
研究了美国2727家企业在新冠疫情初期，如何通过利益相关者管理与内部资源（财务冗余和多元化）及危机暴露程度的匹配来提升绩效，发现全面和简约两种管理方式均有效，但适用条件不同。
Abstract Stakeholder management plays a central role in shaping firms’ responses to systemic crises. However, existing research offers incomplete guidance, often examining it in isolation from firms’ internal resource positions and external crisis exposure. Drawing on a configurational perspective, we analyse a unique dataset of 2727 US firms during the onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic using fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Our findings indicate that both encompassing and minimalist stakeholder management approaches can lead to high performance, but only when aligned with firms’ financial and operational resources (i.e., slack and diversification) and their levels of crisis exposure. An encompassing approach proves most effective under high crisis exposure, as it enhances legitimacy and stakeholder coordination amid uncertainty. In contrast, low‐exposure firms can perform well through a minimalist approach, provided they possess ample financial slack to buffer against disruption. Our study advances stakeholder management research by moving beyond an either‐or perspective, identifying multiple equifinal configurations for achieving resilience. We highlight the causal complexity of firms’ crisis responses and advance a contingency‐based understanding of what works, for whom, and under what conditions.