How can some firms gain and manage competitive advantage over their peers? In a dynamic scenario, what makes a firm stand out from its competitors? This paper attempts to answer these questions by taking a dynamic capability lens and proposing that stakeholder engagement is a key reason for a firm to attain competitive advantage. This paper attempts to explain how and why stakeholder engagement is a dynamic capability by establishing (a) stakeholders as a resource, (b) capability required to explore this resource, and (c) dynamics of the firm–stakeholder relationship. Finally, this paper describes the four different strategies adopted by the firm, namely, reactive, defensive, accommodative, and proactive, and recommends the suitable stakeholder engagement techniques for each of these strategies.
A social license to operate (SLO) has become imperative for extractive and resource‐intensive industries due to their high potential for conflicts. Firms are still struggling to maintain their SLO despite its growing importance. Because most of the extractive industries orient on sustainable development strategies (SDS), this paper investigates the relationship between SLO and SDS through an exploratory study by means of eight semistructured in‐depth interviews. Content analysis of these interviews is done by Atlas.ti software. In essence, this paper provides a perspective on how firms working in extractive industries can employ SDS to gain and maintain an SLO. Along with focus SLO, the study reveals the growing importance of stakeholders in the said industries and gives the direction of how managing the stakeholders can help the firms in the long run.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.