A New Approach to Designing a Political Risk Assessment Survey in International Firms in the Context of Czech International Firms

Abstract

This paper seeks to resolve a conceptual dilemma in the field of political risk assessment in firms‟ international business activities in the context of the Czech Republic. Exploratory interviews were conducted which were designed on basis of a solid body of literature on political risk, international business, political risk assessment, risk management and assessment, and enterprise risk management. The results obtained via these interviews suggest that this PRA function is almost non-existent in Czech international firms, i.e. suggest that findings of previous studies do not apply. Since previous studies of PRA identified a PRA function in the majority of firms involved in international business the results of the exploratory research suggest a novel and different approach needs to be adopted in order to analyse the nature of treatment of host-country political risk in Czech-specific context, and the factors influencing the choice whether or not to adopt a PRA functio