Commercial diplomacy aims at creating and expanding business opportunities abroad. Empirical research on commercial diplomacy from a business perspective is hardly available. This paper presents the results of a study on the experiences of an embassy’s commercial diplomacy activities by home country business executives and representatives abroad. The findings show that companies familiar with the foreign business environment apply less for diplomatic business support, but that support towards newcomers is assessed as valuable. Businesses experience the commercial diplomatic services as reactive, though willing to help. Matchmaking facilities are valued, especially by companies that are not familiar with the foreign business environment.
Governments are recognizing the importance ofcommercial diplomacy as a new area of activity. Most of the literature views commercial diplomacy from a diplomacy and policy perspective. However, not much empirical research has been published on how commercial diplomacy activities are working out in practice. This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of commercial diplomacy in action and how it is assessed by a core target group and stakeholders, namely international business executives and representatives. We present the results of a single case study, the Netherlands embassy in Malaysia. Dutch business executives and representatives doing business in Malaysia were interviewed on how they experience commercial diplomacy facilities and activities as deployed and on their usefulness and effectiveness.
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Da
Datum:
15.06.2011.
Br. otvaranja:
791
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