Managing Risks And Uncertainty In Business Government Relationship

Within this broad domain of nonmarket strategy, I study a set of research questions concerning firms' risk and uncertainty management strategies as a response to government's policy actions. A robust literature in strategy, international business, and management has long established that governments' and businesses' interests do not always align and a measure of risks and uncertainty persists regarding governments' intent, priorities, and future behavior from the firms' perspective. Adopting a phenomena-driven approach, I advance and elaborate upon our understanding with respect to each of these theoretical perspectives - signaling theory, political risks, and policy uncertainty - by examining instances of governments' policy actions as shifts in institutional environment and how that may relate to firms' evaluation of underlying risks and uncertainty. Specifically, I study three such initiatives - law enforcement actions against organized crime, encouraging private participation in infrastructure projects, and harmonization of patent laws with global standards - in the form of three essays. In doing so, I focus on the firm as the unit of analysis, relying principally on quantitative analyses on a sample of observational data but also use other approaches - case study, interviews, etc. - to support my findings.