How do European trade promotion organisations manage their stakeholders?

Abstract

Trade Promotion Organisations (TPOs) exert significant influence on the internationalisation potential of domestic firms and improving the indigenous country’s trade balance. However, TPOs’ strategies to uphold their impact as to the relationship vis-à-vis their stakeholders are largely unknown. This is an important gap in the literature considering that effective stakeholder management can enhance TPOs’ performance and the value they develop for three primary stakeholder groups, namely home country government, domestic firms and foreign trade offices. In this study, we employ the stakeholder theory and draw upon in-depth case studies of 14 European TPOs to address this gap. We advance six related propositions on how funding sourcing, services to domestic firms and functions of foreign trade offices can be effectively associated with TPOs’ relationship management towards these stakeholder groups. The contribution of the study lies on the application of stakeholder theory in trade promotion and the derivation of related sets of strategies.