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The Modern Mystery of Countries, Companies and Change : A new perspective on the relationship between business and nation-states

Today, different parts of a value chain operate in different places, different firms may hold ranges of brands with different national heritages, and leaders, shareholders and customers are widely spread across the world. Policy makers are facing new challenges as national borders define less and less of corporate thinking. In this paper, we argue that there is a need to find a new way of how to understand the relationship between business and nation-states. The theoretical framework was constructed by breaking down the concept of national identity of companies. We found four different aspects that we argue can connect business to nations, and in the empirical study, our ambition is to test this framework. By conducting the study using qualitative content analysis, we aim to answer the research question of if it possible to understand the national identity of companies through different aspects of business, and if so, how this is reflected in the national trade policies of four countries. Our results showed that by looking beyond the traditional view of national identity of companies, policy makers have three important factors to take into regards when considering their relations to business; location, culture and contribution.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-227067
Date January 2014
CreatorsDanielsson, Anna, Yang, Boyou
PublisherUppsala universitet, Företagsekonomiska institutionen, Uppsala universitet, Företagsekonomiska institutionen
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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