Firm engagement: Scale development and verification

Abstract

Stakeholder or actor (e.g., firms, employees, and customers) engagement is critical for value co-creation in the service ecosystem. As a provider of an engagement platform in a service ecosystem, the firm plays a critical role in employee and customer engagement. While customer and employee engagement have received much attention, firm engagement research remains unexplored, nonetheless, is critical for the business development and sustainability. There is no scale that has been developed to measure firm engagement. Development of this scale would provide a holistic picture of engagement from a multi-perspective. Following the conventional scale development process, this study developed and verified a scale to measure firm engagement. First, in-depth interviews with 23 managers of companies in different industries were conducted to establish initial items. Subsequently, item purification (N = 397) and validation (N = 398) were performed. The results show that firm engagement consists of eight dimensions from customer and employee perspectives. Specifically, customer engagement orientation includes empathy, employee participation, customer participation, and resource integration while employee engagement orientation includes management participation, corporate culture, interest alignment, and internal service quality. The scale contributes to the engagement literature and human resource management research and has practical implications for firms to improve employee performance and customer experience.