Kostecki, Michel

2015, Naray, Olivier, Bezençon, Valéry, Kostecki, Michel

Background
Governments seek to promote – beyond the support for individual businesses – increased exports but also the intangible elements, such as nation branding and country positioning for inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and other economic benefits. In this context, commercial diplomats work as State representatives with diplomatic status conducting trade and business promotion activities between a home and a host country supporting directly individual business firms or promoting the home country as a destination for business. Scientific research in management studies / international business is needed to understand more-in depth effectiveness and the nature of the commercial diplomat’s work.
Objectives content and structure
This thesis addresses the contribution of commercial diplomats to business promotion from a management studies / marketing perspective. Mixed research methods are used (qualitative and quantitative) for data collection within a single study. The central research question is “what is the nature of the work commercial diplomats perform”. The thesis is structured around sub-questions: chapter 2 tackles the trends and the major themes in research over time; chapter 3 researches the determinant factors of performance. Chapter 4 presents an integrative framework to build theory and concepts on how commercial diplomats create value for the nation and individual businesses. Chapter 5 focuses how the business community perceives commercial diplomats. Chapter 6 measures time allocation of commercial diplomats in terms of roles and activity areas and establishes correlations with individual features.
Findings and Implications
The main findings include the gap in the current literature about the commercial diplomat’s managerial role as a unit of analysis and the relatively little use of management studies / marketing approaches (chapter 2). In chapter 3, the thesis identifies three dominant types of commercial diplomats: civil servant, generalist and business promoter, depending largely on factors such as the organisational and institutional arrangements, individual attitudes and backgrounds. Further, an integrative framework for systemic analysis of value creation was designed. Inputs are divided into capabilities i.e. institutional/organisational arrangements and resources such as the commercial diplomat’s individual features such as education and business experience. Roles and activities (promotion of trade, investment, tourism, IP and R&D) and their intensity constitute the process. The commercial diplomat’s managerial roles are brought down to three “FAR” roles: Facilitation i.e. coordination, referral, logistics; advisory i.e. intelligence gathering and analysis, internal communication; and representation i.e. advocacy and external communications. The three roles create value in terms of network/relationship capital, knowledge capital and influence respectively. Inputs may impact on roles performed and their output. From a business firms’ (beneficiaries) perspective (chapter 5), the main advantages to use the commercial diplomat’s service appears to business firms as the central platform, the starting point to promote bilateral business; they are considered credible and neutral; commercial diplomats are found valuable in assisting firms in their first steps in entering foreign markets. In chapter 6, the results regarding time allocation show that commercial diplomats spend more than half of their time on the activity area of trade promotion, which is thus considered core business. Commercial diplomats would want some change in their time allocation particularly on the advisory and representation roles. Commercial diplomats are in majority satisfied with their actual time allocation on the facilitation role along with the intelligence gathering and analysis component (which is part of the advisory role). Individual attitudes matter: a higher hands-on attitude is correlated with more time spent on the facilitation role and the trade promotion activity i.e. the commercial diplomat’s core business. It is concluded that commercial diplomats may have to tackle too many different technical activity areas such as S&T, IP and tourism. Therefore, commercial diplomats run the risk of losing focus of their core business.
Theoretical implications include that the management/marketing approach is promising for research: frameworks and theories are to be further tested. The importance of the human factor/ individual features along with pragmatic institutional and organisational arrangements constitute axis of reflection. Further research should tackle performance and efficiency to be measured as contribution the country’s economy (inward FDI, country image) and business support individually. Practical and managerial implications for senior management in charge of designing, planning and managing commercial diplomacy involve that hybrid, pragmatic institutional and organisational arrangements should be found to fulfil both business and government objectives. Talent management and recruiting need flexibility involving cross-fertilisation with the private sector. Clear delineation is needed between core business and extra activities, we, thus, recommend to reconfirm trade promotion as the core business instead of overwhelming commercial diplomats with other complex technical areas such as research and development. Clear division of labour and coordination in the entire trade promotion architecture are to be enhanced with other government sponsored and private business support organisations.