MNEs and the practice of international business diplomacy

Abstract

Scholars of international relations and international political economy have long documented international business diplomacy (IBD) as a practice of multinational enterprises (MNEs), although the specific practices involved have not been consistently established in international business scholarship. We apply "practice theory" to position IBD within the realm of MNEs’ global non-market strategy (NMS), arguing that IBD constitutes a set of practices in the implementation of global NMS, and that the most appropriate practices depend upon two key dimensions of the global institutional governance regime faced by the MNEs: the governance level and the degree of rule formality.