types of U.S. organizations. As a result, while U.S. NGOs may not be engag-ing in strategic reputation management on behalf of the United States, the outcomes of their own reputation management go beyond their corporate in-terests. In addition, because of their explicit country-of-origin identities, the four NGOs have an intrinsic interest in improving the U.S. standing overseas.
Therefore, U.S. NGOs share responsibility for the U.S. reputation and add to the nation’s global outreach efforts.
Finally, although the examples reviewed in this chapter ostensibly em-phasize the American identity of U.S. NGOs and First Amendment-based freedoms of expression, association and petition, the argument for non-state actors’ global outreach applies in the context of other nations as well. One of the interviewed executives suggested that American NGOs are more likely to challenge the U.S. government’s foreign policies whereas, for example, comparable European NGOs tend to limit their advocacy before respective European governments to domestic issues. Such a subjective generalization may not reflect the reality of European NGOs, and U.S. NGOs’ inherent dissent may not be uniquely American after all. Notwithstanding the degree of independence from their respective governments, civil society groups such as NGOs represent a range of opinions and play a role in formation of public opinion in their own countries and abroad (Cohen & Arato, 1992; Haber-mas, 1989). This fundamental aspect of civil society implies that none of the three layers of a nation’s of public diplomacy (i.e., mediated, reputation-al or relationreputation-al) (Golan, 2013) can succeed unless it embraces the nation’s NGOs—those with close government ties, those in opposition, and all those in between.
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International Public Relations and Corporate Diplomacy
SarabDeep K. Kochhar & Juan-carloS MolleDa
Today’s global business comprises a complex web of linkages across a spec-trum of governments and communities. The nature of business is more po-liticized and humanized than ever before (Moore & Sullivan, 2011), which requires a wider set of academic theories and different models of practice, for multinational corporations (MNCs) either looking to engage, or those that have already established themselves, in host countries. Moreover, the advent of globalization has made it challenging for organizations and nations to gain global recognition. The challenge of global recognition demands that nations endlessly eliminate any negative perceptions among their stakeholders so they gain legitimate power and a voice on the world stage.
Organizations today constantly remain in the public eye and under share-holders, media, and activists’ scrutiny (Meznar, Johnson, & Mizzi, 2006).
The challenges for organizations arise from a multitude of stakeholders, di-verse sociopolitical issues, and persistent focus on building and maintaining legitimacy (Drogendijk, 2004). The stakeholder pressures are significantly shaped by global public opinion (Berg & Holtbrugge, 2001) and the use of mediated and personal communications.
The mediated public diplomacy approach that focuses on govern-ment-to-citizen engagement through the third-party mediators has been a strategic global communications effort (Golan, 2013). The need to create a favorable reputation among foreign publics and the media coverage as a prerequisite for achieving that reputation have been explored earlier (Nye, 2004). Prakash (2002) cited globalization of media as a reason for why lo-cal nonmarket issues get global dimension immediately. He further added
that MNCs are increasingly threatened by “supranational actors who oppose them, supranational regimes that govern their behavior and global media that scrutinize them” (p. 15).
Further advancing the mediated public diplomacy approach, Golan (2013) conceptualized the integrated model of public diplomacy. The model presents mediated public diplomacy as a part of the bigger pic-ture and is seen as a short-to-medium term approach to public diploma-cy efforts. The medium-to-long term approach builds country reputation and even helps in nation branding. The long-term approach to public diplomacy is relational in its perspective. The long-term perspective seems more strategic and also characterizes the engagement efforts of MNCs, as influential, political non-state actors, to build and cultivate beneficial relationships with governments and communities worldwide, which is the focus of this chapter.
Countries around the world have their own public diplomacy mechanisms which shape and refine public attitudes overseas. There are many examples of issues and crises where the attitudes of host publics play a determining role in the nation’s ability to pursue its foreign policies. There are also other examples of nations branding themselves in a unique way. In a one-of-its-kind initiative of public diplomacy, the U.S. Department of State launched an Arabic-language Twitter account in 2011, declaring that they recognize the critical role played by social media in the Arab world and that the United States desires to be a part of it.
Public diplomacy has generated a substantial body of critical discourse from both the professional and academic worlds. The current chapter is a significant inquiry into the future of public and, in particular, corporate diplomacy by situating it within a broader international public relations context. The main purpose of this chapter is to argue that corporate diplo-macy comprises many distinct yet related concepts in international public relations.
Specifically, the chapter delves into the realm of public diplomacy and how it is interlinked with corporate diplomacy. The chapter also analyzes the concept of corporate diplomacy by identifying key concepts of internation-al public relations, such as staged and perceived authenticity, locinternation-alization, cross-national conflict shifts or transnational crises, corporate social respon-sibility, and multi-sector partnerships. Finally, the chapter provides some in-sight into concepts of public relations, particularly legitimacy and stakeholder theory, offering some propositions and recommendations for the practice of corporate diplomacy from a relational public diplomacy perspective.