Home Country as Stakeholder: The Rising Geopolitical Risk for Business Leaders

KRC Research, in partnership with Weber Shandwick’s Geopolitical Strategy & Risk Group, has released Home Country as Stakeholder: The Rising Geopolitical Risk for Business Leaders.

COVID-19 super-charged conversations among corporate leaders about the role of business in the world. And as businesses rethink, reevaluate and reassess their role in a post-COVID world and heightened geopolitical competition, how they communicate their value and values to all relevant stakeholders is paramount.

Weber Shandwick’s Geopolitical Strategy & Risk Group uncovers a powerful new dimension to the role of a global business today in its report. The group surveyed executives’ perceptions of the relationship between a multinational business and its home country across 12 countries in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Among the findings, we reveal:

Nearly six in 10 multinational business executives (58%) say their company’s home country is a “very” important stakeholder to their business, second only to customers (63%) and equivalent to shareholders.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of executives rate national security as “very” important to their companies’ business decisions, surpassing diversity and inclusion, the protection of human rights, ESG, and climate change as important decision-making factors with 50% or fewer of all executives citing each of these as “very” important.

87% of executives agree – 44% “strongly” agree – their companies should be prepared to take a more public position on geopolitical issues over the next five years.

“Home country is no longer an unspoken stakeholder. As corporate leaders reset their strategies for a new geopolitical and post-COVID era, they are considering how they deliver and communicate value to their home country stakeholder. Executives are saying corporate responsibility includes national responsibility, and leaders must plan accordingly.” – Michelle Giuda, Executive Vice President of Geopolitical Strategy & Risk, Weber Shandwick

Click here for the report in PDF or click here for a one-pager of findings.