Essays on Stakeholder Engagement

Essay 1 explores the antecedents and dimensions of delivery drone adoption as a last-mile delivery option. With the rising significance of last-mile delivery in catering to diverse stakeholders, firms are actively seeking to harness the potential of delivery drones.1 However, little is known about what drives a firm’s decisions to adopt delivery drones. This study is structured in three phases. Phase 1 employs a triangulation approach to identify potential antecedents of delivery drone adoption. Phase 2 develops propositions to evaluate the antecedents and contingency factors influencing firms’ decision to adopt drones and provides a framework. Subsequently, we validate the framework using data from 101 firms. The results suggest that the firm capabilities, stakeholder concerns, and economic viability influence the adoption of drones for last-mile delivery. Phase 3 examines the dimensions of delivery drone adoption – the timing, breadth, and depth of adoption that vary across adopters and explain this variation among the adopters. The study offers future research opportunities, and guidelines regarding drone adoption for last-mile delivery.

In Essay 2, we emphasize the crucial role of active stakeholder engagement for firms navigating dynamic business environments. We develop engagement orientation as a composite construct with six dimensions (customers, employees, channel partners, investors, and society). We define engagement orientation as " a strategic process by which a firm creates value from its stakeholders and provides value to its stakeholder." We develop and examine the engagement orientation in two phases: Phase1, focusses on development of engagement orientation construct by adapting and refining scales for its lower order constructs (six dimensions) from the extant literature. We employ exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and then confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to assess the construct. We validate the engagement orientation higher order construct using PLS-SEM. In Phase 2, we empirically validate the link between engagement orientation and firm’s financial performance and test how firm capabilities (marketing, technological, and operational) moderate this relationship. We posit that the impact of engagement orientation on the financial measure would be positive. Additionally, we hypothesize that firm capabilities strengthen the link between engagement orientation and performance. Our findings confirm that engagement orientation positively impact performance. Moreover, this positive relationship is significantly enhanced when the firm possesses strong marketing, technological, and operational capabilities. This suggests that firms with robust capabilities in these areas can more effectively leverage their stakeholder engagement strategies to achieve superior financial outcomes. These results underscore the importance of a dual focus for managers: not only should they prioritize stakeholder engagement, but they should also develop and enhance their internal capabilities to maximize the benefits of their engagement efforts. By integrating a strong engagement orientation with well-developed firm capabilities, companies can achieve greater financial success and sustain in the marketplace.