Stakeholder Management and Resource Complementarities: Firm Performance amid Systemic Crises

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.