Transnational companies need a coherent, forward-looking “foreign policy,” but most don’t have one. Although governmental decisions significantly affect global business success, many corporations and legal staffs are only involved in defensive, short-term or narrowly self-interested “government relations.”
Fewer companies have sought to make sophisticated public policy formation and implementation an important dimension of their business’s global growth strategies — they haven’t evolved from a reactive to a proactive approach. This step is necessary, given the increasing global interaction between government and business.
