This paper mainly explores the problem “How can enterprises effectively function in corporate public diplomacy?”, including the preconditions, methods and effects of multinational enterprises' corporate public diplomacy.
Corporate public diplomacy in this paper is defined as a sub-branch of public diplomacy in this paper, which takes foreign public as main audiences to shape a good image for their home country through their transnational business operation, inspired by Ordeix-rigo and Duart, who defined corporate diplomacy in their book From Public Diplomacy to corporate diplomacy, and Zhao Qizheng, who has been hailed as the first person in China's public diplomacy.
Based on Wendt's constructivism theory and Joseph Nye's soft power theory, this paper takes two mobile phone giants Huawei and Apple as examples to compare and analyze how multinational enterprises can effectively carry out public diplomacy, from preconditions, methods to effects, through literature review, questionnaire survey and interview. The questionnaire was collected in Beijing and several interviews was taken in Syracuse and Philadelphia respectively to acquire some first-hand data about this two mobile phone giant’s corporate public diplomacy. Based on critical thinking, I have to explain that due to some uncontrollable influencing factors in interviews and questionnaires, the primary data in this study may be one-sided and not comprehensive enough, though these data are helpful to my paper to some extent.
In the analysis part, this paper analyzed the precondition of corporate public diplomacy from the perspective of multinational enterprises and the relevant countries, the methods of corporate public diplomacy from “Leading the industry development”, “Fulfilling overseas corporate social responsibilities” and “Strengthening brand building”, and the effects of corporate public diplomacy from the challenges and opportunities. In the analysis, this article makes an effort to analyze the corporate public diplomacy of the two multinational enterprises by using a lot of data about Huawei and Apple, and refers to the data reports in relevant mobile phone industries, the work reports of these two multinational enterprises and the information published on their official websites.
In the conclusion part, this paper summarizes the background and process of the previous argumentation, and summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of Huawei and Apple in corporate public diplomacy through a comprehensive analysis of the preconditions, methods and effects of their corporate public diplomacy. According to the comparative analysis of the two multinational enterprises in this paper, Huawei and Apple have their own advantages and disadvantages in foreign transnational operation and corporate public diplomacy. The case study is extended to a general conclusion, and attempts to answer the question formulated at the beginning of this paper: “How can enterprises effectively function in corporate public diplomacy?”. At the end of the paper, the author reflects on the deficiencies in the research process based on critical thinking.