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With the popularity of social media platforms, firms have now tangible means not only to reach out to their stakeholders, but also to closely monitor those interactions. Yet, there are limited methodological advances on how to measure a firm’s stakeholder networks, and the level of engagement firms have with these networks. Drawn upon the customer engagement and stakeholder theory literature, this study aims to propose an approach to calculate a firm’s stakeholder network engagement (SNE) index.

After deriving the SNE index formula mathematically, this study illustrates how the SNE index functions using eight firms’ online corporate social responsibility (CSR) networks across four diverse industries.

This study proposes and illustrates a new approach of capturing the SNE in a stakeholder network for use by academic and practical researchers.

Researchers can use the SNE index to assess engagement in stakeholder networks in various contexts.

Managers can use the SNE index to assess, benchmark and improve the nature and quality of their CSR strategies to derive greater return on their CSR investments.

Building on the stakeholder, communication and network analysis literatures, this study conceptualises SNE in four theoretical dimensions, namely, diffusion, accessibility, interactivity and influence. Then, an index that measures SNE is mathematically derived and empirically illustrated.

The purpose of this paper is to explore customer engagement in Twitter via data mining.

This study’s intended contributions are twofold: to find a clear connection among customer engagement, presumption, and Web 2.0 in a context of service-dominant (S-D) logic; and to identify social networks created by prosumers. To this end, the study employed data mining techniques. Tweets about IKEA were used as a sample. The resulting algorithm based on 300 tweets was applied to 4,000 tweets to identify the patterns of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM).

Social networks created in IKEA’s tweets consist of three forms of eWOM: objective statements, subjective statements, and knowledge sharing. Most objective statements are disseminated from satisfied or neutral customers, while subjective statements are disseminated from dissatisfied or neutral customers. Satisfied customers mainly carry out knowledge sharing, which seems to reflect presumption behavior.

This study provides partial evidence of customer engagement and presumption in IKEA’s tweets. The results indicate that there are three forms of eWOM in the networks: objective statements, subjective statements, and knowledge sharing. It seems that IKEA successfully engaged customers in knowledge sharing, while negative opinions were mainly disseminated in a limited circle.

Firms should make more of an effort to identify prosumers via data mining, since these networks are hidden behind “self-proclaimed” followers. Prosumers differ from opinion leaders, since they actively participate in product development. Thus, firms should seek prosumers in order to more closely fit their products to consumer needs. As a practical strategy, firms could employ celebrities for promotional purposes and use them as a platform to convert their followers to prosumers. In addition, firms are encouraged to make public how they resolve problematic customer complaints so that customers can feel they are a part of firms’ service development.

Theoretically, the study makes unique contributions by offering a synergic framework of S-D logic and Web 2.0. The conceptual framework collectively relates customer engagement, presumption, and Web 2.0 to social networks. In addition, the idea of examining social networks based on different forms of eWOM has seldom been touched in the literature. Methodologically, the study employed seven algorithms to choose the most robust model, which was later applied to 4,000 tweets.

This paper aims to analyse the impact of clusters on development and growth at the firm and regional level in Latin America (LA). The past 20 years have witnessed an acceleration of cluster initiatives, assuming their positive impact on firm performance and regional development. However, theoretical development and empirical meta-studies in emerging countries to validate this assumed relationship are scarce.

This paper reviews empirical evidence from a population of 123 studies and a sample of 45 empirical studies including 216 clusters in LA.

It concludes that clusters contribute to both development and growth at the firm- and regional-level contingent to factors such as cluster stage of development, collective efficiency, the pattern of governance of the value chain and the sector in which the firm operates; however, clusters are also a potential source of socio-economic divides.

Therefore, these results qualify the conclusions of studies of clusters in developed countries (Porter, 2003; Delgado et al., 2010).