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The purpose of this study is to define the communicational profile of unattached diplomats and explore the viability of state-centric concepts such as citizen diplomacy when discussing non-state actors emerging from civil society.

The paper uses a comparative, multiple case design focusing on descriptive case studies (Yin, 2018) that explore the diplomatic endeavours and social biographies of “citizens of the world” acting at a global or local level, not explicitly attached to or explicitly against an official, state agenda: Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg and Bill Gates.

The unattached diplomats have organisational mobility but are attached to the cause they promote, a configuration that fundamentally opposes that of the traditional or organisational diplomat. Looking at individuals from a diplomatic perspective, not as instruments or as targets, but rather as agents with their own agenda, issues and diplomatic capital, the unattached diplomats define their lack of attachment through organisational mobility, adversarial positioning or personal financial autonomy with regard to state diplomatic institutions or for-profit/not-for-profit organisations.

A higher number and diversity of case studies can enable the identification of patterns and standards.

This study introduces and operationalises the concept of unattached diplomats. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to discuss it in the context of another emerging concept, currently insufficiently researched: civil society diplomacy.

This chapter describes the business goals, purpose, and strategy of public diplomatic services. It reinforces diplomatic organizations’ fundamental bureaucratic administrative culture (Tier 1). The bureaucratic culture of diplomacy is deconstructed, and each of the five layers is described in detail. The authors also explain why focusing on the artifacts and behavior layers are the dominant and essential starting points for analysis in diplomatic cultures. The public service culture (Tier 2) overlays and mediates the bureaucratic culture.

Additionally, the authors describe the influence that political appointees as leaders may play in shaping public service cultures. Next, the authors explain how diplomatic cultures reflect the core values of a state’s culture. Next, the chapter outlines the landscape of external influencing cultures (Tier 3) in diplomacy. Finally, the knowledge, learning, and collaboration (KLC) culture of diplomacy is considered, with opportunities for future growth.

The purpose of the article is to set the broader conceptual context for the exploration of the role of business in public diplomacy in this special issue of the Journal of Business Strategy.

This article reviews the development of the public diplomacy concept, and point out its current gaps in light of the profound transformation in the global society. The article then discusses the linkage and relevance to the business community.

The article highlights that public diplomacy is not a unitary but a multi‐dimensional concept, and argues for selective engagement by the private sector, that is not only desirable but also feasible. The value propositions global business can bring to the process include a global world‐view, managerial practice, and communication competence and other resources. It also explains areas of public diplomacy that they may play a part in.

This paper provides the theoretical grounding for businesses' involvement in public diplomacy.

The European External Action Service (EEAS) is a relatively new diplomatic service established in 2010. In previous analyses, the authors noted a dominance of security and foreign policy messages emanating from the EEAS, demonstrating the European Union (EU)'s negotiating power. It was clear it had discovered the benefits of public diplomacy, but rather practised traditional diplomacy on public diplomacy specific platforms. The authors aim to pursue the monitoring of the EEAS’ strategy, covering 2019 and 2020, to understand how the use of Twitter supports the evolution of the EU foreign policy.

Questioning if the EEAS is entering the second phase of its life cycle (launched in 2010, its introduction phase was under Katherine Ashton, 2009–2014, followed by Federica Mogherini, 2014–2019, and Josep Borrell, 2019–2024), the authors carried out a content analysis on 765 tweets. The authors used the MARPE Diplo methodological framework to compare how the EU uses public diplomacy through its EEAS to negotiate its own interests with non-EU parties under the presidency of Federica Mogherini (period 1), during the transition period (period 2) and under the presidency of Joseph Borrell (period 3).

Based on the comparison with their previous studies, the authors demonstrate that, over the years, the overall discourse of the EEAS is much more oriented towards public diplomacy.

The present study has two limitations. The first refers to the sampling of the participants involved in the citizen science experiment: they belong to a homogeneous age category and similar education level which might have biased their analysis. Second, the authors acknowledge the usual limitations linked to citizen science. However, the authors acknowledge a growing emphasis on the outcomes for society involving citizens and including partnerships between the public and scientists as well as an increased public engagement in policy processes.

The research leads into new insights regarding the European-centred translation of the EEAS messages, compared to the off-centred view of non-European contributors.

The citizen science approach allows to integrate the targeted public to apply public diplomacy content analysis.

This case study is based on the principles of citizen science and demonstrates the importance of an off-centred approach in the analysis of the practices of public diplomacy.

In this chapter we approach the issue of Business Diplomacy (BD) from a historical perspective, showing how this activity has been performed since the ancient Greece. In particular, we give a brief overview of the main BD concepts used, starting with the proxenos, the “pioneers” in the BD field, until present days.

The analysis is grounded on a theoretical approach backed by a comprehensive overview of the representative literature in the field of BD. We identify and discuss the main challenges to be faced by BD in a globalized world, dominated by multinational corporations (MNCs).

We show that BD has been practiced for centuries and nowadays is still performed by honorary consuls and chambers of commerce. In a globalized world, BD is being assimilated by MNCs either as their main activity or as an auxiliary one becoming a key tool and mindset toward securing their market reputation, positioning, and legitimacy.

Apart from the historical overview of the beginnings and evolution of the main diplomatic actors and activities, the chapter proposes new concepts and legal frameworks for the actual BD field such as: consulariate instead of consulate (devoted to business) and chancellariate instead of embassy (devoted to political affairs).

The current study aims to map the existent modes of engagement used by both individual and organisational actors of Romanian diaspora community in the UK to build public legitimacy and social value in the host society. This study focuses on two main questions: (1) What are the forms of engagement by which diaspora members enact their role as diplomats for ethnic diaspora communities? (2) What is the nature of their communication practices that sustain these forms of diasporic engagement?

This study is based on an analysis of online public documents extracted from different websites, blogs and public social media accounts, complemented by primary data. The research design is a multi-levelled case study.

The main findings are that Romanian diaspora in the UK develops a specific model of diplomacy, focused on cultural and political forms of engagement. Firstly, equality and belonging are two key dimensions that clearly define this diasporic community diplomatic actions and practices. Secondly, the communication that fosters its networked and associative features has shifted towards a more democratic and strategic model.

This paper has multiple original points. Firstly, it deepens the understanding of diaspora diplomacy, connecting the concept with strategic communication. Secondly, the identification and theorisation of specific forms of engagement of diasporic communities reflects a process which is yet underdeveloped in both types of literature. Findings may be instrumental in providing strategies for relationship building, cultivation and the engagement efforts of the UK institutions regarding immigrant integration.

A number of scholars including Benno Signitzer and Jacquie L'Etang have proposed public diplomacy as an alternative model to describe and/or inform the practices of public relations. However, international relations and political science scholars claim major differences between public diplomacy and PR, and few studies have sought to reconcile these claims and counter‐claims. The purpose of this paper is to report a comparative analysis of key concepts and principles of public diplomacy.

This article reports a comparative analysis of key concepts and principles of public diplomacy and the “new diplomacy” as described by Shaun Riordan and public relations (PR) as defined in Excellence theory and other contemporary models of PR to identify commonalties as well as divergences, and discusses how these can inform PR theory and practice.

This analysis shows similarities between these fields of practice, as well as six unique concepts and principles of public diplomacy and “new diplomacy” that inform corporate diplomacy and organisational diplomacy as an alternative paradigm to “public relations”.

Reconceptualising PR as corporate and organisational diplomacy involves much more than a name change. It recasts PR within alternative theoretical frameworks that are significantly different to those of dominant paradigms of PR and informs new and refined approaches to practice.

Adopting the concepts and principles of public diplomacy and “new diplomacy” also would provide a more ethical and societally‐orientated approach to PR.

Most studies comparing public diplomacy and PR have focussed on commonalities with a view to expanding PR's territorial claim or gaining validation of PR. This analysis takes the opposite approach, identifying concepts and principles of public diplomacy and “new diplomacy” that contribute to an alternative paradigm of PR that is more effective, more societally‐orientated, more ethical, and ultimately more publicly accepted.

This study proposes a description of the civil society diplomacy that emerged in the early solutions found to fight the COVID-19 crisis. The author analyses this concept as the intersection of the social movements of individuals and civil society organisations' and international health care. Its purpose is to determine the international structure of the connective actors aimed to find concrete solutions against COVID-19 and to characterize the communication visible on Twitter towards this civil society engagement.

Based on a data-driven approach, the author collected a large dataset of tweets from Switzerland between March and June 2020 and conducted a computational text analysis methodology.

The results showed who the participants were, provided a visualisation of the digital networking process between engaged and mentioned participants at national and international levels, and determined the emotions that emerged during three event phases.

The study reveals that features of connective social care actions and strategic collective communication can illustrate civil society diplomacy for a shared cause in times of health crisis.