Conventional notions of strategy within the discipline of International Business are focused on corporate activity and how these commercial agents adjust to the context of the global marketplace. Geostrategy focuses on the forms of strategy deployed by the other major agent operating within the global system: states.
States strategizing is widely accepted. States in the global system compete, co-operate and collaborate across multiple dimensions from trade to environmentalism, impacting upon the context in which corporate strategies are formed. This book posits that geostrategies are shaped and formed by the interaction of any state with other states, emerging as amalgams of political and economic forces within the global system.
State strategy has tended to come from one of two directions: geopolitics or business. The result is that the concept of geostrategy has been underexplored and under-developed as it has fallen between two approaches. This book offers a multi-disciplinary approach with Geostrategy located at the confluence of the overlapping domains of international business, political geography, international political economy, global politics and political and social theory.
It is geostrategy that shapes the relative operating environment of business. For too long the state has been a neglected topic, with the accepted narrative that it would be rendered irrelevant by the sheer power of globalization. However, recent trends have seen the state reassert itself and begin to restrain and reshape the global system. Thus, for both practitioners and students, understanding these forces of change is a necessary capability. This book brings geostrategy into the mainstream of the study of International Business.