Business Diplomacy

Abstract

Business diplomacy may be seen as at the limit of Law & Management scholarship, but as contributing to it, nonetheless. Indeed, many business diplomacy scholars are not from the legal field, but from domains classically seen as management science instead, especially international business. The practice of business diplomacy involves building relationships with stakeholders (including, but not limited to, community members, governments, and NGOs), and employs tools, which may include using contracts to build relations, in a way similar but different from proactive law, as well as using corporate political activity to impact the law to enhance a firm’s performance, among other tools. Business diplomacy depends on a certain level of legal astuteness and in many ways uses legal tools to deal with threats such as those of Porter’s five forces studied elsewhere in this handbook. This chapter investigates the existing literature to further unpack this field and its connection with Law & Management, and areas where Law & Management scholarship synergy with business diplomacy scholarship could bring benefits to both.