{"id":5573,"date":"2020-11-07T11:35:09","date_gmt":"2020-11-07T11:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/devops.uth.gr\/dev\/?p=5573"},"modified":"2024-08-31T17:46:59","modified_gmt":"2024-08-31T17:46:59","slug":"smart-city-diplomacy-inspired-by-corporate-diplomacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartdevops.eu\/dev\/smart-city-diplomacy-inspired-by-corporate-diplomacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart City Diplomacy inspired by Corporate Diplomacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Wilfried Bolewski<\/em><\/p>\n

Presentation at the “Key Competences for Smart Cities Stakeholders<\/a>” workshop at the ALL DIGITAL Summit<\/a> on 8 October 2020.<\/p>\n

\u00a01. Smart Cities as global actors<\/h3>\n

In the last years, cities have been flexing their economic and political muscles to gain increasing prominence on the world stage (Curtis\/Acuto, 2018).\u00a0 With their own foreign policies they engage in city-based diplomatic activities and even secure a more formal voice in multilateral affairs (Amiri\/Sevin, 2020).<\/p>\n

Cities develop own diplomatic initiatives that seek to translate their increasing importance and growing capabilities into influencing a new form of 21st<\/sup> century urban governance. The international agenda of global cities\u2019 concerns include the most pressing problems of world politics, such as climate change, public health, urban security, transnational terrorism, refugee settlement, financial and environmental regulations, transport, but also income distribution and gender equality. Their manifold objectives range from city branding to brokering international agreements and providing creative local solutions in the face of global challenges which the international community of states finds itself increasingly unable to efficiently govern. Cities remain an enabler for country\u2019s values and human rights.<\/p>\n

Cities are not signing international treaties, nor do they have regular embassies. However, cities can engage in all kinds of negotiations, and influence world politics. They form their networks, practice dialogues with foreign counterparts, attend meetings with heads of state, facilitate public diplomacy, identify and share best practices and encourage collaboration between international private and public entities (Amiri\/Dossani, 2019).<\/p>\n

Cities are at the frontline where foreign public come to interact with a country and its people. State public diplomacy activities are run through or by city administrations (Amiri\/Sevin, 2020). These efforts are sometimes parallel to traditional state diplomacy, they often engage with state authorities, some are even multilaterally recognized by the UN\u2019s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Others could even be in competition or contrary to state activities. Embracing and enhancing city diplomacy does not necessarily mean undermining state diplomacy. In our globalized, fast-paced, and hyper-connected world, involving city networks in national and international decision-making processes could also be the beginning of strategic delegation of diplomatic tasks and responsibilities to cities (Amiri\/Dossani, 2019). State governments should also place their diplomats in cities to coordinate these activities.<\/p>\n

In their diplomatic activities, cities rely on the soft power of transnational municipal networks leading coalitions of public, private, and civic entities towards specific urban governance outcomes \u2013 rather than on sovereign forms of power (Davidson et al., 2019). The emergence of these international collaborative networks involve extensive engagement with the private sector, among them digital networks. This collaboration with transnational private worlds is increasingly crucial to addressing global challenges which transcend national borders and the capacities or the political will of state governments. The transnational forms of networked urban governance reflect the blending of public and private (Davidson et al., 2019). In some cases, the private sector can even play the role of initiator and facilitator of such city networking efforts. This type of privatization of city diplomatic activities takes on an entrepreneurial character and a soft institutionalization of public\/private relations.<\/p>\n

The conduct of international relations by representative of cities (City Diplomacy) is also perceived as an indication of a localization participation in foreign policy, a crisis of representation, an encroachment on the supremacy of state sovereignty and the power of hierarchies, the constitutional principle of subsidiarity as well as an important structural shift in the foundations of international society.<\/p>\n

2. City Diplomacy: aims, tools, procedures<\/h3>\n

The rise of City Diplomacy with its soft power potential for pushing human and humanistic concerns to the forefront of international politics generates a capacity to engage and influence sustainable problem-solving. In a time of unprecedented global disturbances, common challenges and threats, City Diplomacy could even strengthen human solidarity for collective responses to conflict prevention, peace-building and post-conflict reconstruction.<\/p>\n

So far, very little empirical and academic attention focused on the tools, modus operandi of human-centered City Diplomacy and the principles it embodies, other than the occasional opportunism (Hachigian, 2019; Caravaca, 2018; Mursitama\/Lee, 2018). Its decision- making processes and outcomes lack an international legitimizing strategic foundation. This could be found in the civilizing virtues of a mindset of thinking and acting diplomatically within a shared space of functionality, responding to changing expectation on diplomacy as a societal practice.<\/p>\n

“Societal diplomacy” and the underlying shifting from state rights to human rights is supplemented by a movement from state sovereignty to popular sovereignty taking into account the participatory role of the people and their perceptions, expectations \u00a0and commitments. This movement corresponds with another paradigm shift of sovereignty: from territoriality (and “domaine r\u00e9serv\u00e9”) to functional connectivity and specific identity (Bolewski, 2017). Today, there is more diplomacy in civil society and more of the civil society is found in City Diplomacy (Caravaca, 2018).<\/p>\n

A reference to the established concept of Corporate Diplomacy practiced by transnational corporations could provide the necessary orientation knowledge, competence, and practical lessons for the future of Smart Cities.<\/p>\n

3. Corporate Diplomacy as soft power influence for Smart Cities<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Corporate Diplomacy has become a key concept of trusted and coordinated collaboration with government and local communities in global politics and a compass for private\/public common good management in turbulent times.<\/p>\n

International society is in demand of content-sensitive orientation knowledge to reassess, adjust and accommodate diplomacy\u2019s essentials (human factor interdependency and interactions) to new expectations of the public sphere (Bolewski, 2017). This requires an opening through reflexive consciousness towards the values and cultures of diplomatic engagement and negotiations. Decision-makers should learn to think and act responsibly through the middle<\/em> of conflictual situations towards compromise (Conway, 2019 a\/b; Manfredi-Sanchez et al., 2017), thus managing politics through<\/em> diplomacy. At the tipping point, such a paradigm shift of mindset and thinking will create a “diplomatic watershed moment” in the management process for public\/private partnering aiming at compromise and consensus building as major accomplishments (Hare, 2020).<\/p>\n

Reappraising its moral and civilizing virtues, a socially embodied diplomacy \u2013 not tied solely to the state\u2013 could become a form of “third culture” (Leira, 2017; Bolewski, 2008): a societal diplomacy with and through human relational practices (Qin, 2020). This encounter with Self and Other (Kuus, 2017) can even lead to a process of diplomatic social bonding among actors (Holmes\/Wheeler, 2020).\u00a0 Such a form of Everyday Diplomacy (Constantinou, 2016; Salacuse, 2013; Sennett, 2012) applies also to the ways individuals and communities (transnational companies, Smart Cities as well as NGOs) engage with and influence decisions about world affairs (Marsden et al., 2016).<\/p>\n

This nascent knowledge area turning into an innovative management practice (Falcao et al., 2020) has developed over the last decades, dealing with geopolitical and non-commercial risks in international relations by sharing social\/societal responsibilities among government and business: the concept of Corporate Diplomacy <\/strong>(White, 2020).<\/p>\n

4. Corporate Diplomacy: a governance compass for multiplex turbulences<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Confronted with social and environmental demands international business enterprises seen as \u201cprivate public entities\u201d are requested to get involved in issues of public concern by providing public goods and co-creating more just and peaceful co-existing societies. International diplomacy provides the tools for corporate conflict management (Melin, 2020; Hoffmann, 2014). Dealing with these geopolitical and non-commercial risks and tackling grand challenges, corporations are becoming diplomatic co-actors in the trade of diplomacy and acquiring access to the diplomatic arena (Ru\u00ebl, 2020; Lima, 2019). Thus, multinational corporations are to be acknowledged both as objects and actors in diplomatic processes and international affairs (Sevin\/Karaca, 2016).<\/p>\n

Operating in an increasingly complex and volatile environment, transnational corporations experience the rising importance of the diplomatic mindset and practices. To navigate the ship of business through these challenges, it is imperative that global corporations integrate corporate diplomacy as governance compass into their strategic planning to successfully match the liabilities that come with operating in a foreign market (Doherty, 2014). When corporate diplomacy activities (Naray\/Bezen\u00e7on, 2017) are aiming at economically as well as socially sustainable business solutions, they can \u2013 at the same time \u2013 improve the public perception of companies\u2019 legitimacy in society (social credit) by practicing political influence and filling government gaps (Mogensen, 2019, 2020). This perceived legitimacy and trust capital will also accredit them as political actors and civil society representatives.\u00a0 In order to strengthen their place in society, they should treat societal shortcomings as opportunities; connecting the sustainability of business success with social transformations by harmonizing or at least reconciling economical with social goals (Nyberg\/Wright, 2020). Corporations adhering to the diplomatic communication tool of Corporate Diplomacy are also gaining political influence over the development of societies (Chakhoyan, 2019). Transnational corporations can profit from traditional state diplomacy in order to create an enabling business environment to anticipate and avoid costly conflicts, if they practice Corporate Diplomacy as a dialectical decision-making process and key concept of trusted and coordinated collaboration, on a national and international level, with government and local host communities (Gutu, 2019).<\/p>\n

The essence of diplomatic practice consists of managing situational and contextual ambivalence and harmonizing divergent interests and expectations within a holistic approach of emotional, social and intercultural intelligence (for more see Bolewski, 2019).<\/p>\n

Such a mindset of management makes use of the essentially civilizing mission and typical social practices reflecting the contemporary humanist approach to people-centered alterity diplomacy (Zaharna, 2019: 126) as a comprehensive problem-solving device:<\/p>\n