Business, Governments and Political Risk in South Asia and Latin America since 1970
This working paper provides a new perspective on how businesses have responded to political risk in South Asia and Latin America over the last half century. The existing business history literature on political risk is focussed on the experiences of Western multinationals in the twentieth century, especially in Nazi Germany and the post-colonial developing world. This working paper is instead focussed on perceptions of political risk by domestic business leaders active in Latin America and South Asia since the 1970s. Employing data from the Creating Emerging Markets oral history database developed at the Harvard Business School, the working paper identifies five major sources of political risk: macroeconomic and policy turbulence, excessive bureaucracy, political instability, corruption, and violence. Employing NVivo coding, marked regional differences were identified. Macroeconomic and policy turbulence was the biggest perceived source of risk in Latin America. Excessive bureaucracy was the biggest source of perceived risk in South Asia. There were regional differences also in how leaders in different regions responded to the same risk. In both regions business leaders reported having to dedicate significant time to navigating government regulations, but interviewees in South Asia frequently reported attempting to steer clear from highly regulated industries, while many interviewees in Latin America discussed how they adapted to heavier government oversight by forming closer ties or working relationships with incumbent administrations.
Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Risk Management; Government and Politics; Business History; South Asia; Latin America;
Citation:
Jones, Geoffrey, and Rachael Comunale. "Business, Governments and Political Risk in South Asia and Latin America since 1970." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 18-102, May 2018. View Details