ریسک باز اندیشی کشور: بینش از نظریه کارآفرینی

Though country risk analysis is a well-established field within international business, evidence indicates that established measures of country risk are unreliable predictors of actual volatility. Conventional strategies aimed at minimizing or otherwise avoiding downside risk are likely to yield limited results at best; at worst, these strategies will lead managers to miss entrepreneurial opportunities, which are likely to be greatest during conditions of disequilibrium. Drawing from entrepreneurship theory, I propose an alternative perspective from which to approach country risk. By focusing on both the downside and upside elements of country risk, strategies may be devised to harvest upside volatility while containing downside volatility. Rather than being something to always avoid, country risk becomes an opportunity to profit from uncertainty.

The purpose of this paper has been to provide one example of theorizing in international entrepreneurship that extends beyond the straight-forward application of international business theory to the entrepreneurship context, or of entrepreneurship theory to the international business context. Specifically, I contend that entrepreneurship theory may be used to refute the utility, and even highlight the potential hazard, of following the conclusions drawn from academic- and practitioner-oriented research concerning country risk. Furthermore, the adoption of an entrepreneurial perspective allows for a fresh approach to dealing with country risk, based on the pursuit of upside risk (opportunity), rather than the generic avoidance of risk. Drawing from ideas in entrepreneurship and related fields, I have presented four entrepreneurial strategies for managing country risk, which are contrasted with four conventional risk management strategies. While the entrepreneurial strategies are not necessarily superior strategies for all firms and for all situations, managers that draw from the broader pool of conventional and entrepreneurial strategies for managing country risk are likely to experience superior results.