The External Relations of American Multinational Enterprises

Business corporations need to engage in external relations (ER) because society must be continuously convinced to give and maintain its support of this man-made and socially tolerated instrument for organizing economic activity and to stop short of unduly restraining it. Society here refers to the more or less organized and powerful institutions and interest groups that can assist or hamper business in its economic role. Government is usually the most relevant "external" institution but it is more or less influenced by interest groups and by the more amorphous general public. These various collectivities constitute the "nonmarket" and "macro-managerial" environments of business, which are distinct from the relatively free "markets" for the firm's inputs and outputs, and from its internal "micromanagement." Hence, external relations (ER) is that function