Home Country as a Key Stakeholder for Global Businesses

COVID-19 super-charged conversations among corporate leaders about the role of business in the world. As businesses rethink, reevaluate and reassess their role in a post-COVID world and heightened geopolitical competition, how they communicate their value and values to all relevant stakeholders is paramount.

By Michelle Giuda

Weber Shandwick’s Geopolitical Strategy & Risk Group uncovered a powerful new dimension to the role of a global business in our report, Home Country as Stakeholder: The Rising Geopolitical Risk for Business Leaders. In partnership with KRC Research, we surveyed executives’ perceptions of the relationship between a multinational business and its home country across 12 countries in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Among the findings, we reveal:

  • Nearly six in 10 multinational business executives (58%) say their company’s home country is a “very” important stakeholder to their business, second only to customers (63%) and equivalent to shareholders
  • 56% of executives rate national security as “very” important to their companies’ business decisions, surpassing diversity and inclusion, the protection of human rights, ESG, and climate change as important decision-making factors with 50% or fewer of all executives citing each of these as “very” important.
  • 87% of executives agree — and 44% “strongly” agree — their companies should be prepared to take a more public position on geopolitical issues over the next five years.

Our study demonstrates that home country is no longer an unspoken stakeholder. As corporate leaders reset their strategies for a new geopolitical and post-COVID era, they are considering how they deliver and communicate value to their home country stakeholder. Executives are saying corporate responsibility includes national responsibility, and leaders must now plan accordingly.

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Michelle Giuda

Author

MICHELLE GIUDA

Executive VP of Geopolitical Strategy & Risk, Weber Shandwick. Former Assistant Secretary of State for Global Public Affairs, U.S. Dept. of State.

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