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The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical overview of the recent phenomenon of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) from China, from a more macro and historical perspective.

The paper critically reviews the extant literature and re-assesses available data on OFDI from China.

It is argued that despite the explosion of academic interest the phenomenon was neither unpredicted nor sudden.

The paper also argues that OFDI from China is not yet so important and neither presents insurmountable challenges to the established literature on FDI.

Previous studies of business‐government relations have tended to take either a macro approach (using a single theoretical framework to explain all business‐government relations) or a micro approach (one that fails to explain why business‐government relations have not improved over time). This article applies Lowi′s four‐part typology of policy types. In order to test the typology′s usefulness, a survey of business executives and government officials was carried out. The findings confirmed the thesis: business satisfaction with its relationship to government will be highest in the case of distributive policies, and decline to lowest in the case of constituent policies. A “meso‐level” theoretical framework is recommended to provide not only a better understanding of the multi‐levelled character of business‐government relations, but also future research with a practical orientation.

In a globalized world where emerging markets are more important than ever, there is an increasing pressure on international businesses and governments to work together. The set of facilities known as commercial diplomacy combines the interests of both by highlighting new markets and investment opportunities.

In this chapter, we present a literature review based on 56 relevant publications to assess what we currently know of this important activity.

The results indicate that research on commercial diplomacy consists of many subtopics, resulting in a patchy understanding of the topic as a whole.

We discuss why integrative research focusing on the business–government relationship and the organization and the value of commercial diplomacy are needed from an international business perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of corruption level in steering the business–government relations (BGRs) in developing countries. It also examines the moderating effect of firm size.

Using robust tobit and probit models, this study tests the response behavior of 9787 firms from 23 African countries to their government's policy and regulations and the direct effect of corruption control level in their response decisions. The authors also perform several other additional analyses to ensure the robustness of the findings, including change analysis, two-stage model and recursive bivariate model.

The result shows that corruption level is among the significant factors that drive BGRs exponentially. The finding points out that, there is a strong alliance of business and government in more corrupt countries. Moreover, the impact of corruption level exacerbates when the firm is bigger.

Managers should focus more on activities that create long-term sustainable advantage. Valuable time of the senior managers should not waste on negotiating government policies to earn a short term advantages.

It is evident that legal and transparent government alliances can lead to economic rent for firms. However, it is important to note that any alliance based on corruption and illegality is short-lived and ultimately detrimental to long-term prosperity. Therefore, it is crucial for firms to prioritize ethical business practices and build relationships with governments that prioritize transparency and accountability.

Given the detrimental impact of corruption on economic progress, it is crucial for Africa policy-makers to prioritize reforms aimed at reducing its adverse effect. By implementing ethical and transparent business practices, countries can attract more investment and promote economic growth.

This study contributes to the existing literature on the passive form of political connectivity/activity and to what extend corruption level affect the political activities of firms.

The purpose of this paper is to disentangle the interactions between logistics operators and government stakeholders in cross-border logistics operations with a specific focus on the UK and Brazil.

The research builds on supporting literature. The comparative cases of the UK and Brazil are examined by reference to an extensive series of focus group workshops as well as a series of interviews with key informants. Care was taken to make sure that comprehensive engagement the respective business and government communities were in place, and that there were opportunities to feedback on the analysis.

Suggestions were provided on how to improve the business–government interactions in cross-borders logistics operations. The analysis considered transaction costs and scope for trade facilitation. The research also helped produce a descriptive model of business–government interactions in cross-border logistics operations.

The paper points to new directions in the understanding of how businesses interact with government agencies, and the kind of issues they face in cross-border logistics operations. However, the research only looked at two countries and there is significant scope for further enquiry within the logistics literature.

Reduced transaction costs at the border and subsequent economic opportunities for the UK and Brazil.

A list of practical reform recommendations informed by the business communities of the UK and Brazil.

This paper’s original contribution to the literature is its framework for the analysis of transaction costs associated with the business–government interactions in cross-border logistics operations. In addition to the resulting findings in Brazil and the UK it may serve as a template for research elsewhere.

International business theory leans heavily on neoclassical economics, ignoring its unrealistic assumptions and the many changes in the environment. The chapter calls for a revision of the theory to a contingency theory. The major contingent elements analysed are the political system, business–government and NGOs relations, industries, regimes, ownership patterns, the degree of reliance on ethical behaviour, the institutional environment and social norms.

Government, business support organisations (BSOs), support services and client business firms constitute the key actors involved in the business–government interaction within commercial diplomacy. While businesses are interested in support in their international operations, commercial diplomats (CDs) work towards both objectives: supporting individual firms and promoting the home country's national economy in general. BSOs, public or private or mixed such as bilateral chambers of commerce, sector associations, investment promotion agencies and other self-help business organisations, complete the CD's offer, and are often referred to, and participate directly and indirectly in the home country's trade promotion effort.

The nature of the CD's service to beneficiaries is highly people based, and contains both a consistent amount of government instruction and CD's own personal judgment and initiative in promoting various sectors/sub-sectors and spotting business opportunities. The ‘intermediary’ function of the CD between the beneficiary business and its potential future business partner is important. The interaction may start on either side: the business firm may approach the CD or vice versa. To a large extent, export issues remain the most important enquiries from business to CD vs. other issues such as foreign direct investment, joint venture and debt issues.

From a business perspective the main advantages to use the CD's service are threefold. The CD appears to business firms as the central platform, the starting point to promote bilateral business. Second, CDs enjoy trust as an institution: they are considered credible and neutral (credibility and neutrality). Last but not the least, CDs are found useful in helping out firms in their first steps in foreign markets (not necessarily first exporters but for the firms to which the host country market only is new). The transaction between CD and beneficiary business firm has a material price: some services such as market research are for fee and are often subcontracted. Others being part of a ‘basic service’ of diplomats are free of charge.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how knowledge management and university-industry-government collaboration – including the triple helix – relate with each other in influencing organizations’ performance. In the competitive environment nowadays, an organization’s ability to create and use knowledge becomes ever more essential in the search for sustainable competitive advantage, even leading to the search for new forms of inter-organizational arrangements.

The representatives of such collaborations selected for this study are the National Institutes of Science and Technology. The categorical content analysis technique was used for the qualitative analysis of the data.

The principal contribution was the proposal of an analytical model relating the knowledge management and triple helix theories and the proposed dimensions (namely, structural, relational, cognitive and the context), considering the peculiarities of the Brazilian context. The findings show that the organizational structure (structural) influences not only the relationship among members (relational) but also the flow of knowledge (cognitive), as well as how relational elements (collaborative culture, trust and leadership) facilitate knowledge sharing. Moreover, the context affects these three other dimensions. The main obstacles identified were cultural differences, bureaucracy and the socio-economic reality, while facilitators were the existence of technology parks and incubators, government incentives and geographical proximity between universities and industry.

This topic was chosen as there are few empirical studies that comprehensively relate the topics of knowledge management and university-industry-government cooperation focusing on the Brazilian context.

This paper aims to problematize existing conceptualization of corruption by presenting alternative perspectives on corruption in Indonesia through the lens of national/cultural identity, amidst claims of the pervasiveness of corruption in the country. In so doing, the paper also sheds light on the micro-processes of interactions between global and local discourses in postcolonial settings.

The study applies discourse analysis, involving in-depth interviews with 40 informants from the business sector, government institutions and anti-corruption agencies.

The findings suggest that corruption helps government function, preserves livelihoods of the marginalized segments of societies and maintains social obligations/relations. These alternative meanings of corruption persist despite often seen as less legitimate due to effects of colonial powers.

The snowballing method of recruiting informants is one of the limitations of this paper, which may decrease the potential diversity and lead to the silencing of different stories (Schwartz-Shea and Yanow, 2013). Researchers need to contextualize corruption and study its varied meanings to reveal its social, historical and political dimensions.

This paper strongly suggests that we need to move beyond rationalist accounts to capture the varied meanings of corruption which may be useful to explain the limited results of existing anti-corruption efforts.

This study calls for a greater use of qualitative methods to study broad social change programs such as anti-corruption from the perspective of the insiders.

This paper contributes to the discussion of agency at the interplay between the dominant and alternative discourses in postcolonial settings. Moreover, the alternative meanings of corruption embedded in constructions of national identity and care ethics discussed in this paper offer as a starting point for decolonizing (Westwood, 2006) anti-corruption theory and practice.

Managing the interface between the corporation and government has become one of the most rapidly growing management areas. The examination, evaluation and teaching of this aspect has been the work of the Max Bell Business‐Government Studies Programme at York University in Canada. The author describes the work of the programme to date and pays particular attention to the research being undertaken. The Programme has established itself as a major force in research and teaching in this area in Canada. The way in which both the public and private sectors can operate in the best interests of society as a whole is important to all.