Competitive Advantage through Engagement

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.…