Volume 26 Issue 4 Thematic Issue: Risk Management Practices of European Companies in Times of High Global Uncertainty Article 4 December 2024 Engaging with Geopolitical Uncertainty: Discursive Riskwork and Engaging with Geopolitical Uncertainty: Discursive Riskwork and Western MNEs’ Divestment Announcements at the Onset of the Western MNEs’ Divestment Announcements at the Onset of the Ukraine War Ukraine War Ana Mavretić Independent Scholar, Slovenia Anastas Vangeli University of Ljubljana, School of Economics and Business, Ljubljana, Slovenia AND University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences, Ljubljana, Slovenia, anastas.vangeli@ef.uni-lj.si Follow this and additional works at: https://www.ebrjournal.net/home Part of the International Business Commons Recommended Citation Recommended Citation Mavretić , A., & Vangeli, A. (2024). Engaging with Geopolitical Uncertainty: Discursive Riskwork and Western MNEs’ Divestment Announcements at the Onset of the Ukraine War. Economic and Business Review, 26(4), 265-283. https://doi.org/10.15458/2335-4216.1348 This Original Article is brought to you for free and open access by Economic and Business Review. It has been accepted for inclusion in Economic and Business Review by an authorized editor of Economic and Business Review. ORIGINAL ARTICLE Engaging with Geopolitical Uncertainty: Discursive Riskwork and Western MNEs’ Divestment Announcements at the Onset of the Ukraine War Ana Mavreti´ c a , Anastas V angeli b,c, * a Independent Scholar, Slovenia b University of Ljubljana, School of Economics and Business, Ljubljana, Slovenia c University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences, Ljubljana, Slovenia Abstract This paper studies the geopolitical riskwork practices employed by Western multinational enterprises (MNEs) in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, focusing specically on divestment announcements. Using a discursive riskwork framework, the study analyses how Western MNEs articulate and legitimize their divestment decisions in a novel geopolitical context. The ndings reveal that Western MNEs align their corporate actions with emerging liberal geopolitical norms and values, thereby rhetorically establishing their role as responsible geopolitical actors. The paper advances the discourse-oriented study of international business phenomena, the study of geopolitical risk management beyond adherence to sanctions and reputation management, the concept of riskwork, and the empirical studies of divestment announcements. Keywords: Multinational enterprises, Geopolitical uncertainty, Riskwork, Divestment, Russia–Ukraine conict JEL classication: F23, M14, G34 Introduction F ew historical events had such a momentous impact on Western multinational enterprises (MNEs) as the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war does. Already in the rst days after February 24, 2022, when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine to the dis- may of the international community, corporate boards started making public statements on the war and, in an equally unprecedented cascadelike dynamics, announced their divestment from the Russian mar- ket. According to the understanding of divestment as a process consisting of several interconnected stages (McDermott, 2010), there were two important steps that companies had to take: rst, a difcult business decision had to be reached under exceptional pres- sure; and second, this decision had to be implemented against the backdrop of unprecedented uncertainty (dened as a situation where due to the sheer com- plexity and uniqueness, probabilistic thinking does not apply; Kay & King, 2020). However, there has been an equally important but overlooked in-between task: the divestment intention had to be communi- cated to a wide array of stakeholders including an attentive global public against the backdrop of such a geopolitical uncertainty. This strategic crisis com- munication work of divestment announcement (DA) was carried out in a compressed timeframe: in con- trast to its many historical precedents, the resolute DAs were made immediately after the invasion and on an unprecedented scale. However, the DAs also reected a different way of thinking and talking about geopolitical uncertainty in an increasingly securitized manner, serving to further precipitate this change. This paper studies the interplay between the doxic shifts in the eld of international business (IB) before Received 7 July 2024; accepted 29 October 2024. Available online 10 December 2024 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: anastas.vangeli@ef.uni-lj.si (A. Vangeli). https://doi.org/10.15458/2335-4216.1348 2335-4216/© 2024 School of Economics and Business University of Ljubljana. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). 266 ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 and after the Ukraine invasion of 2022 and Western MNEs’ DAs from Russia in response in the rst six months following the invasion. In particular, we fo- cus on the functional–pragmatic aspect of corporate communication (Malyuga, 2024) in a radically uncer- tain context, while, borrowing from critically reexive perspectives, we emphasize the inherently creative and ethicizing discursive practices (Cerne, 2019) that have underlined the operations of Western MNEs. The paper proposes that both the form of action taken by Western MNEs and the underlying change in prac- tice that it represents can be captured by the concept of riskwork developed by Power (2016b), referring to the “practices through which organizations ascertain the ‘existence’ of, and respond to, risk,” which contain a signicant discursive component, with DAs being the outcomes of such work (Maguire & Hardy, 2016). Geopolitical riskwork, in this sense, is comprised of soft practices that help engage with uncertainties re- lated to the geopolitical context of IB, and as such can be tactical and strategic in nature (Aggarwal, 2001). On the other hand, geopolitical riskwork can be also read as the—for the most part—mundane, daily repeated work that encompasses tasks of research, writing, and communication with informants and stakeholders, through which organizations and man- agers sync themselves with or juxtapose themselves against the different actors with whom they interact, or rather, in the eld(s) they belong to (Rego & Steger, 2019). In times of emergency, this riskwork features exceptional assignments, such as drafting DAs, that require channelling the position of the rm vis-à-vis a complex constellation of social forces. In practical terms, geopolitical discursive riskwork takes uncer- tainty and translates it into risk, or makes it seem risklike—risk being considered here as a manageable challenge where possible outcomes are known (Kay & King, 2020). Importantly, the discursive component of riskwork as reecting organizational and social identity and sense of belonging (Boholm & Corvellec, 2016; Raškovi´ c, 2021) also intersects with issues that tran- scend formal risk management and touch upon core ontological and axiological orientations of companies beyond their role of economic agents. In the con- text we study, geopolitical riskwork is dialogically coshaped by established practices of corporate crisis communication combined with the inherently novel and uncertain geopolitical context, culminating with the Ukraine emergency 2022 in which the DA was made. This changing context of geopoliticized busi- ness in which geopolitical riskwork is central stands in contrast with the context of business as usual— and the political marketplace of peacetime corporate political activity (Katic & Hillman, 2023). The im- plications of an emerging contextually grounded geopolitical riskwork extend beyond the nonmarket and market strategies of rms (as divestment is inher- ently a market move), but also their self-conception as geopolitical actors at a time of sudden doxic and paradigmatic shifts within and beyond IB, as well as the clouds of radical uncertainty. Methodologically, the paper builds upon in-depth thematic analysis based on inductive coding of 25 public statements of Western MNEs that have an- nounced their intention to divest from the Russian market within the rst eight months of 2022 (and within six months of the invasion). Additionally, the paper builds upon a semistructured interview with a European economic diplomat posted in Rus- sia and informal discussions with industry insiders, as well as analysis of secondary literature including both academic and policy publications, to enrich the understanding of the context in which these develop- ments took place. The paper, in that sense, focuses on immediate discursive practices that have come in the form of corporate press releases that announce divestment, without dwelling on the long-term trends, modalities, and impacts of corporate divestment, which them- selves have been a subject of rich scholarly work produced since the onset of the Ukraine war. Thus, we take the communicative act of divestment announce- ment rather than the operational move of actually carrying out divestment as the centrepiece of our study. The communication of the divestment intention is an overlooked element of the divestment process, which can be placed somewhere between making the divestment decision and implementing it (McDer- mott, 2010)—or, potentially, reneging on it. However, rather than conceptualizing it as a step in a linear process, in line with the discourse-based view in IB (Treviño & Doh, 2021), we argue that DAs are dis- cursive articulations of normative (dis)positions that matter far beyond the operational context of the issu- ing company. DA statements have been referred to in a re- cent seminal work discussing paradigmatic shifts in Europe, in particular, the rise of “geopolitical cor- porate responsibility” and “geopolitical citizenship” of MNEs in light of the Ukraine war (Eckert, 2024), which is a concept that signicantly advances the de- bate on the identity of rms as parts of international relations and agents of change (Vaara et al., 2021). Two other recent studies have looked at DAs by qualita- tively studying press releases and public statements. Panibratov and Brown (2018) have conducted an in- depth thematic analysis of six statements by MNEs exiting Russia after the events of 2014, using a framing ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 267 approach, a study that we extensively build upon. On the other hand, Gurkov and Dahms (2024) have con- ducted content analysis of large-N public statements made in the rst 2 months to advance a realism- inspired, international-relations-rooted approach in combination with crisis management theory, focused on strategic outcomes. Our paper differs from these two as we adopt a discursive approach that sees DAs not as mere communication acts that seek to legit- imize a tough and unpopular business decision (as divestment is predominantly interpreted as a sign of failure or simply bad news for companies; Grun- berg, 1981; Panibratov & Brown, 2018), but rather as meaning-making tools that normatively ground cor- porate decisions within an emerging geopolitically tilted doxa of IB, contributing to a deeper paradig- matic shift. Moreover, we concur with the proposition that DAs are not evidence of “corroborated exits” as DAs are reversible (Evenett & Pisani, 2023); while we consider the actual signicant strategic outcomes de- serving of attention, we are primarily concerned with ideational, doxic shifts (rather than material ones— even though we believe that the two are inherently intertwined) in line with our discursive approach, which is closer to Eckert’s (2024) goal—although in our paper, corporate statements are not support- ing references but rather the main body of data we analyse. We look at DA press releases, therefore, from the perspective of Foucauldian “discursive practices” (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982) constituting geopolitical riskwork that at the current juncture are predomi- nantly aimed at managing the risk associated with sustaining business relations with Russia, and voic- ing a normative position in a context of geopolitical uncertainty. We argue that in addition to conven- tional reputation enhancement or avoiding getting caught up in international sanctions, such discur- sive riskwork practices aim, more deeply, to reinforce the belonging of MNEs to an emerging “whole- of-society” Western geopolitical bloc, under a new geopolitical paradigm, with a particular role taken up by businesses at the backdrop of geopolitical un- certainty that the invasion of Ukraine created. As such, the way to manage the risk is to simply elimi- nate it through divestment. Ultimately, we argue that the reason for such thinking is to be found in the emerging IB doxa that now encompasses rm geopo- litical corporate responsibility (Eckert, 2024), which approaches what may be termed a liberal “corporate geopolitical obligation” (CGO), a counterpoint to the concept of the “corporate political obligation” (CPO) originally developed to discuss nonmarket consider- ations of doing business under populism (Hartwell & Devinney, 2024b; Raškovi´ c et al., 2024). Beyond its relevance for risk management, the pa- per advances the emerging “discourse-based view” in IB (Treviño & Doh, 2021). Treviño and Doh see corporate decisions—including the decision to internationalize—as rooted in discursive processes and struggles over meaning. We ultimately advance their dynamic discourse-based view of the inter- nationalization process, by focusing on the critical inection point of market exit as rooted in an abrupt shift of the international business environment (in their work, discussed briey through the case of Google in China). We, however, add a relational element to it, as we focus on a phenomenon of di- vestment movement that has been unveiled almost as a collective action of MNEs of various industries, sizes, and headquarters locations, in which the role of intangible costs of not conforming to the emerging geopolitical rationale, or as we discuss, the excep- tional CGO, are too high. More broadly, we also see the doxic shift in IB in light of new geopolitical re- alities as a discursive process of its own, in which business decision makers not only tackle geopolitical risks, but also play a geopolitical role. 1 Background 1.1 Divestment and geopolitical dynamics before the Ukraine war Divestment is a strategic move in corporate restruc- turing that involves full or partial disposal of an asset or a business unit, achieved either through different forms of sale, exchange, closure, or bankruptcy; for- eign divestment is such a disposal or closure of assets or business units abroad (Benito, 2019; Boddewyn, 1983; Borga et al., 2020; Iurkov & Benito, 2020). Di- vestment can take place as a spin-off (also known as a spin-out or a starburst), a split-up, split-off, equity carve-out, or asset sell-off (Kumar, 2017). The existing literature (Boddewyn, 1979; Brown, 2021; Duhaime & Grant, 1984; Jagersma & Van Gorp, 2003) points to a myriad of factors inuencing foreign divestment behaviour. Importantly, the process of divestment (McDer- mott, 2010) is not the mirror opposite or the reverse process of investment (Boddewyn, 1983). While ac- cording to conventional approaches, there are multi- ple criteria to be satised when making a decision to invest (e.g., the OLI or eclectic paradigm; Dunning, 2001), sometimes only a single criterion can be a suf- cient justication of divestment (Boddewyn, 1983). More often than they would like to, due to difcul- ties in internationalization, poor preliminary analysis, and structural changes in the industry environment, business units abroad often do not reach nancial 268 ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 performance targets, prompting headquarters to un- dertake “deliberate and voluntary liquidation or sale of all or of a major part” of the struggling active oper- ation in question (Boddewyn, 1979; Jagersma & Van Gorp, 2003). MNEs divest foreign business units due to better business prospects elsewhere (Boddewyn, 1979; Jagersma & Van Gorp, 2003). Some of the divest- ment motives are strategic and relational in nature. When rationalizing activities abroad, MNEs return to the core business and divest the foreign activities that no longer t. Companies that engage in dif- ferent forms of international partnership (e.g., joint venture) sometimes encounter differences in each other’s guidelines on how to govern their actions (Boddewyn, 1979; Jagersma & Van Gorp, 2003). When these differences are irreconcilable, divestment is a way out. Moreover, divestment can have contagious dynamics (Brown, 2021). As a business move, divestment therefore carries a stigma of being associated with business failure (Ansar & Caldecott, 2016). This makes the issue of communicating the intention to divest a challenge, in which signicant discursive work needs to be in- vested in reframing the divestment decision in ways that it appears as legitimate and strengthen the image of the companies, which often touches upon nonmar- ket considerations, requiring discursive legitimation strategies (Panibratov & Brown, 2018). Governments and their policies, domestic and ex- ternal, play a signicant role in driving divestment. Favouring “home-based” companies over foreign ones and imposing barriers that demand too many resources to overcome is just one example why MNEs decide to divest from certain countries (Jagersma & Van Gorp, 2003). In some cases, MNEs decide to divest because they would have to engage in un- ethical business practices in order to maintain or grow in a particular market (Boddewyn, 1979). In other cases, geopolitical tensions and unfavourable developments endanger the company interests and therefore push divestment to the forefront. Notably, companies—as well as other actors, in particular shareholders—can also pursue divestment as a strat- egy to achieve sociopolitical change, especially when corporate decisions t in a broader divestment move- ment. However, the goals and results of different divestment movements vary greatly. Some aim at tackling wicked problems such as climate change (Hestres & Hopke, 2020), or transform harmful prod- ucts, services, and whole industries (e.g., “tobacco, munitions, adult services, and gambling,” among oth- ers; Ansar & Caldecott, 2016). Of particular importance for this study are divest- ment movements that seek to exert pressures on particular governments with the goal to induce po- litical change. A landmark historical precedent has been the divestment movement against the South African (SA) apartheid. Between 1948 and 1994, SA and former South West Africa (now Namibia) practised regimes based on racial segregation and exploitation of black people, which had greatly ben- eted from the presence of MNEs (predominantly US-owned) (Harrington, 1985). With the rise of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s, US ac- tivists started boycott campaigns against companies tied to apartheid regimes (Voorhes, 1999). Foreign in- vestors were further pressured to disengage from SA as economic and trade sanctions were implemented, leading to a signicant decrease of FDI ows to SA, which resumed only after SA’s rst democratic elec- tions in 1994 (Gelb & Black, 2004). Apple and General Electric withdrew from SA in 1985 and 1986 respec- tively, and by March 1987, almost half of the US-based companies followed (Beaty & Harari, 1987), although a signicant number remained (Gelb & Black, 2004). In sum, the antiapartheid divestment movement was the rst notable politically driven divestment movement, although sanctions and the budding un- favourable economic developments (e.g., recession and record-high ination) and increased civil unrest presented already sufciently serious risks for com- panies to exit the SAmarket (Arvanitis, 2005). The war and atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, in 2003–2020 sparked another divestment movement. In 2004, over 190 or- ganizations formed the Save Darfur Coalition to raise awareness, mobilize a response, offer humanitarian help, and pressure foreign rms to divest (Soeder- berg, 2009), particularly energy companies that had exploited the country’s huge oil deposits, with link- ages to American and worldwide nancial markets and the Khartoum administration (Patey, 2009). So- cial movements pressuring companies to divest from Israel have also been galvanized in response to the Israel–Palestine conict; however, they have had lim- ited success (Hallward, 2022; Nerkar, 2024). 1.2 The Ukraine war context The divestment wave triggered by the Russian in- vasion of Ukraine that took place on February 24, 2022, is deeply intertwined with the Ukraine cri- sis of 2014, although the war itself and the broader geopolitical circumstances that led to the present sit- uation can be traced much further back in history (Michailova, 2022). Nevertheless, the Maidan revo- lutions in Ukraine, the subsequent conicts in the east and south of Ukraine in 2014 culminating in the rise of separatist militias in Donetsk and Luhansk, and the Russian annexation of Crimea are signicant, for they triggered an earlier divestment movement, ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 269 even if that one appears much weaker in comparison to the contemporary and ongoing wave. In fact, the 2014–2022 path dependence explains both the conti- nuity and change in reactions by geopolitical actors (Rabinovych & Pintsch, 2024); by extension, the cau- tiousness that accompanied MNEs’ actions in 2014 (Panibratov & Brown, 2018) helps lay the foundations for understanding the highly contrasting resolute ap- proach adopted in 2022. In particular, the period 2014–2022 was not a period of idleness, but rather a period of new type of geopolitical riskwork emerging in Western companies, attuned to the growing disillu- sionment with the “end-of-history” honeymoon, but also as a response to geopolitical turbulence beyond the Russia–Ukraine conict (e.g., the US–China strate- gic competition and the COVID-19 pandemic, among others). In 2014, Russia and the West (predominantly, the EU and US) engaged in tit-for-tat sanctions, which had signicant impact primarily on Russia’s econ- omy, although backlash in Europe (e.g., in the agricul- ture sector) was evident too (Deresky, 2016, p. 23–25; van Bergeijk, 2022). MNEs doing business in Rus- sia back then saw themselves as being caught in a cross re, in which they perceived themselves as hav- ing little agency (portraying themselves as victims or hostages of the higher forces of geopolitics). Western MNEs in Russia were unprepared for dealing with the emerging uncertainties (Deresky, 2016, p. 23–25). Caught off guard, managers struggled to translate them into manageable risks, as pressures kept getting worse with the escalation of sanctions. While, in the face of adversity, a few MNEs “stepped back” their in- volvement in Russia (downsizing or divesting), many companies chose “doubling down” (i.e., continuing doing business despite having a bleak assessment of the environment), with a handful trying to put geopo- litical tensions aside and continue doing “business as usual” (Global Counsel, 2015). In the ensuing years, geopolitical riskwork trans- formed. For many mainstream voices, the geopolitical crisis was perceived as an exceptional and temporary hurdle. A report with a sample size of 500C compa- nies from over a dozen industries and 28 countries showed that 70% of companies were optimistic about the easing of the tensions between the EU, the US, and Russia (Peterson & Laudicina, 2015), which helps understand why despite enduring the effects of sanc- tions or Russian retaliation, only a few companies withdrew from the Russian market after the events of 2014–2015. This was reected in the broader dis- course; for example, leading international business publications emphasized the resilience of the Russian economy in light of the sanctions, framing Russia as a geopolitical major power, an image that was seen as reinforcing Russia’s general sustained economic attractiveness (Berger et al., 2017). In the last issue of the World Bank’s Doing Business Report in 2020 prior to its cancellation, Russia ranked 28th among the most attractive business destinations worldwide (ahead of major EU economies such as France or Spain), with incremental improvements over its previous years’ rankings (World Bank Group, 2020). On the other hand, signs of doxic shifts started to appear in the second half of the 2010s, serving to “awaken” the political and geopolitical agency of businesses (Ciravegna et al., 2023)—from domestic political polarization in Western societies and increas- ing pressure to act, surging populism worldwide presenting own forms of CPO (Hartwell & Devin- ney, 2024a, 2024b), to emergent geopolitical hotspots on the global stage. These factors, in turn, cumula- tively reinforced the geopolitical rationale in business. Moscow’s post-2014 actions to reduce dependencies and boost resilience help explain the enduring pos- itive perceptions of Russia as an economic actor despite its negative geopolitical aura; however, it also explains Moscow’s rising condence to invade Ukraine and coming to terms with an even greater wrath of the West (van Bergeijk, 2022). On Febru- ary 21, 2022, as the Minsk agreement was expiring, the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, which had been embroiled in secessionist warfare as independent republics. Three days later, follow- ing Putin’s orders, Russian troops invaded Ukraine from its north, north-east, south, and south-east bor- ders. According to the ofcial Russian version, this was part of a so-called special military operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine and push back against what was seen as strategic encroachment by the West; according to Ukraine and its supporters, this was a vulgar display of expansionism and im- perialism. The response by NATO has been to grant full support to Ukraine, including the provision of weapons, against what it saw as an illegal and il- legitimate invasion, as well as a security threat to Europe and the West more generally. More than two years later, violence has escalated, and so have casu- alties on both sides, with bleak prospects for peace and with an increasing fear of a full-on NATO– Russia conict; the potential use of nuclear weapons is not excluded. A logic of “escalation of commit- ment” drives all parties to the conict, while their mutual perceptions rmly interlock them in a sur- vivalist zero-sum constellation (Michailova, 2022). The response of the global community, leaders, insti- tutions, and businesses to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has been unprecedented in terms of reaction time, support offered, and action taken, dwarng not 270 ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 only the response to the 2014 annexation of Crimea, but any other similar event in modern history. West- ern governments as well as leading supranational and international organizations imposed unprecedented sanctions packages, including the exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT international bank payment system, an asset freeze for those individuals who are believed to be close to the Kremlin, and various trade bans. Russia quickly found itself excluded from different social and political spaces. Russian athletes and artists have been banned from competing in various sport- ing and music events, for example, the 2022 FIFA World Cup and the Eurovision Song Contest. In condemning the Russian invasion, Western gov- ernments and international organizations were joined by businesses all around the world, which demon- strated that lessons had been learned. Contrary to their perceptions as voiceless actors in 2014, in 2022 MNEs immediately suspended new investments, be- gan to look for appropriate buyers of their shares in Russia (Yale Chief Executive Leadership Insti- tute [CELI], 2024), and provided humanitarian aid to refugees—in general, acting even before new sanc- tions were drawn up and often with at least a short-term loss. Importantly, a signicant part of the post-2022 divestment has not been a direct conse- quence of sanctions, and companies have in fact exceeded the degree of divestment prescribed by sanctions, which is why this has been framed as “self-sanctions” (Demertzis et al., 2022). Conventional strategic studies have focused on the interplay of two factors: reputational costs of staying and operational costs of exiting (Mol et al., 2023). In the process, the responsibility, peer pressure, and accountability of acting have disproportionally affected larger rms. 1 In sum, since the beginning of the inva- sion/timeframe, more than 1000 companies have curtailed their operations beyond the legal requirements. However, over time, some of them have backtracked on their early enthusiasm and found ways to resume or restart doing business with Russia. The Yale CELI List of Companies (2024) has tracked the actions of more than 1200 global companies that have/had operated in the Russian market, classifying them into: a) withdrawals (halt of operations with the goal of market exit, i.e., divestment); b) suspension (temporary curtailing of operations while keeping return options open); c) scaling back some business operations while continuing others; d) buying time (postponing deepening of Russian operations while maintaining existing ones); and e) digging in (continuing with business as usual, including expansion). Our study examines 25 companies that made their announcements in the rst eight months following the invasion and were at the time classied as “withdrawing” from the Russian market, that is, only the rst category by Yale CELI (2022). 2 2 Geopolitical riskwork framework Riskwork can be dened as the “work of man- aging risk,” or “the actions and routines through which organizational actors makes [sic] sense of risk, of themselves and their roles, and collectively try to enact institutional scripts,” moving beyond the “of- ten implicit epistemological assumption : : : that risk management is a form of knowledge, grounded in statistical thinking” (Power, 2016a, p. 8). Corporate geopolitical riskwork, then, by extension, can be de- ned as the set of habitual and situational actions that help make sense of uncertainty and translate it into risk emerging from the dynamics of the geopo- litical environment—as opposed to conventional risk management, which relies on ready-made indicators, trend analyses, and complex formulae. In this paper, we draw on the discursive approach to risk (Jasanoff, 1998) and to riskwork (Maguire & Hardy, 2016), based on the consideration of risks as “discursively constructed, in that it is through differ- ent discourses that risks get represented, articulated, and made into meaningful objects for intervention” (Maguire & Hardy, 2016, p. 132, see also Hardy & Maguire, 2016). Such a discursive construction of risks, or rather, parameterization of uncertainty, is in- herently a political–normative process, infused with struggle over prevailing values that then give mean- ings and directions (Beck, 1999). Ultimately, such framing of risk complements the discourse-based view of the corporation and its internationaliza- tion, which frames key decisions as products of “dynamic interaction between decision-makers and decision contexts” (Treviño & Doh, 2021, p. 1378), and more broadly, aligns with corporate discourse studies, which include thinking, acting, interacting, believing and other discursive “ways of corporate being” (Ja- worska, 2020). We differentiate geopolitical riskwork from both conventional geopolitical risk management and geopolitical nonmarket strategy, to emphasize the role of the everyday, seemingly mundane, practical activities rooted in the embodied knowledge and 1 Point corroborated by an interview with an EU diplomat, November 2022. 2 Three out of these 25 companies have since then been downgraded by Yale CELI, and two of them shamed as reneging on their promises. ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 271 Fig. 1. The riskwork process. experiences that ultimately constitute discursive riskwork practices that make sense of the otherwise uncertain and unknown. These intrinsic elements of the habitus (i.e., the ingrained dispositions and behaviours of actors) of economic organizations are thus more granular phenomena than the structured knowledge production rooted in technical expertise (i.e., conventional risk management), as well as than the strategic and tactical positioning and carefully planned corporate political activity or corporate social responsibility. We thus use riskwork to bridge the gap between the formalized and codied, on the one hand, and the emerging, experiential, and embodied aspects of dealing with nonmarket risk, on the other. In other terms, “risk management practice : : : must be understood as an outcome of varied forms of riskwork rather than a starting point or presumption” (Power, 2016a, p. 8). The process of riskwork is visualized in Fig. 1. In the context of the Ukraine war, geopolitical riskwork refers to the work companies have carried out, often under the radar, in terms of understanding and engaging with the geopolitical challenges across the post-Soviet space, and in general terms, against the backdrop of the post-1989 world, especially the shifts in the aftermath of the 2014 events, with companies adapting their approaches accordingly. In that sense, the discursive work of making and justifying DAs in 2022 can be interpreted as a culmination but also a further propulsion of the geopoliticization of business. Moving forward, we adapt Maguire and Hardy’s (2016) framework of the different “risk scenarios” or rather the different constellations of risk object and the ways in which it is interpreted to the realm of corporate geopolitical risk management (Table 1). While in their work this is a static framework that serves to compare the different constellations, we aim to account for a dynamic transition between them. Maguire and Hardy’s framework distinguishes be- tween three general risk scenarios. Established risks, that is, risks that belong in the domain of “business as usual,” are well documented and can be managed through standardized practices; discursively they are constructed from a position of calmness and con- dence, and as such are “normalizing” in nature. Emerging risks refer to risks that are at the early stages of being recognized as such—hence they are ad- dressed through “problematizing” riskwork, which Table 1. Geopolitical riskwork dynamics. Risk scenario Established risks Emerging risks Eliminating risks Features - Familiar and well-documented - Broad consensus within the community - Standardized management procedures - Novel and not well understood - Signicant uncertainty - Lack of established procedures - Abolishing hazardous practices - Use of innovative approaches - Proactive risk management Discursive riskwork practices - Referencing past data and experiences - Anchoring current activities to past actions - Categorizing and sequencing - Questioning existing assumptions - Innovating new methods - Particularizing unique aspects - Pluralizing stakeholder involvement - Legitimizing new approaches and positions - Collaborating with stakeholders Discursive riskwork formats - Annual reports and regular policy documents on key trends - Regularly updated compliance manuals - Standard risk-assessment tools and templates - Standard project management and risk management plans - White papers and internal memos - Novel risk assessment tools - Expert panels and studies, consultations - Strategic and contingency plans - Extraordinary speeches and public communications - Proactive engagement with coalitions, associations, and alliances Note. Original work following the contribution by Maguire and Hardy (2016). 272 ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 seeks to develop a better understanding and novel ways of managing the risk. Finally, there is the con- stellation where risk is seen as unmanageable and hazardous and thus needs to be surgically elimi- nated; in this “eliminating risk” scenario, the nature of riskwork “symbolizes” or rather legitimizes novel approaches, often in a relational context, as legitimacy is constituted only through intersubjectivity. Using such a framework, actual geopolitical risks as well as specic measures such as DAs can be consid- ered uid and context-dependent, as their discursive construction can vary based on different external cir- cumstances, as well as different intra-company and intra-IB-eld dynamics. This is particularly visible in the context of the Ukraine war. Structurally, the international landscape—already in the period lead- ing up to the Russian invasion (and not only due to tensions with Russia, but also because of the West- ern concerns about the rise of China, COVID-19, and other factors, as described above)—was transition- ing from a liberal order in which the purpose of rms had been discursively constructed around the notions of corporate social responsibility and cor- porate citizenship towards a “geoeconomic” one in which there is an emerging notion of geopolitical corporate responsibility and geopolitical citizenship (Eckert, 2024; Freeman, 2022). This transition entailed a shift in how geopolitical riskwork was carried out, from routine ideology-free analyses of exposure in the past towards assessments where normative values play a more central role (especially regard- ing tensions between the West and the non-West). In such a shifting environment, divestment, in ad- dition to being an instrument of structural power (Gunningham, 2017), has been considered a powerful tool to formulate normative messages and discur- sively disengage from adversarial regimes (Chatterjee & Kumar, 2024; Eckert, 2024; Roberts et al., 2019). Ideologization of CEOs has been an additional fac- tor determining the divestment process of US rms in the wake of the Ukraine war, as liberal-leaning CEOs have been much more sensitive to stakeholder pressure and keen to assume value-driven posi- tions than conservative-leaning ones (Thams & Dau, 2023). Divestment and DAs have been previously studied from a discursive perspective by taking into account the “intangible resources” of the rm—such as - nancial, organizational, and reputational assets—and the ways they are leveraged to achieve diverging, sometimes contradicting, business objectives (Dra- hokoupil, 2014; Malbaši´ c et al., 2015; Panibratov & Brown, 2018). Of particular signicance here is the work by Panibratov and Brown (2018), who have studied different discursive strategies in reframing divestment to avoid the stigma of it being associated with failure. This open-ended feature of the discursive view on divestment is particularly relevant for advancing our framework. For instance, divestment may be framed as a response to what may be perceived as established risks, accompanied by discursive practices that build on institutionalized routines and past experiences, so that divestment is framed as a “business-as-usual measure” to manage a situation characterized by “known knowns.” The gradual introduction of “un- knowns” to the environment—or, rather, the loss of stability and predictability—or the emergence of com- plex or volatile contexts under the VUCA framework (Mack et al., 2016), where regardless of the degree of knowledge of the situation on the ground, economic actors have a good sense of the potential conse- quences of actions such as divestment, captures the scenario of emerging risk. Here, previous assump- tions and consensuses are brought under question, calling for a proactive approach, much in line with the literature on wicked problems (Raškovi´ c, 2023). Finally, when the geopolitical environment is per- ceived as untenable, divestment can be constituted as a “last-resort” measure which is not aimed so much at risk management, but rather at catastrophic- risk elimination; here discursive elements of riskwork have created legitimizing conditions for a divestment decision to be announced, by providing the align- ment between the acuteness of the issue and the (newfound) long-term mission of the company as well as its embeddedness in a broader community of economic (and noneconomic) actors, not least due to reputational interdependencies and reputational spillovers, related to the concept of “reputational commons” (Boutinot et al., 2015; Fauchart & Cowan, 2014). 3 Data and method 3.1 Qualitative coding of statements The paper follows the call by Beamish and Hasse (2022) for methodological pluralism and in particu- lar for employing qualitative approaches in studying the impact of rare events on IB strategy and prac- tice. We take DAs as a form of geopolitical riskwork which analytically are “discursive practices,” that, is ways of creating and disseminating knowledge (in a Foucauldian sense) in the social world (Bacchi & Bonham, 2014). In this sense, DAs are texts through which the meaning of important corporate strategic decisions—that is, decisions to divest—is created and disseminated, which involves both the use of par- ticular language as well as a broader “intertextual” ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 273 process encompassing the dialogue between different ideas of different actors as well as the contribution of contextual factors. In some sense, DAs as a discur- sive practice are based on an already rich, embodied experience of corporate communication ingrained as constitutive of the habitus of the MNE as actor, but they are also shaped by novel exogenous impulses and the dynamic context in which they are made. DAs are best studied by looking at public an- nouncements as strategically crafted documents, dis- cursive articulations that serve to generate and dis- seminate knowledge and “truth” from the vantage point of the company. They articulate discourses based on the interplay of symbolic elements and ma- terial facts and present the company discourse to a diverse audience of stakeholders. In this paper, DA public statements from Western MNEs aiming to exit the Russian market were sam- pled purposively. We use “Western” in geopolitical terms: it encompasses economically highly devel- oped liberal democracies: NATO members, strategic US allies such as Japan, as well as nominally neu- tral countries rmly devoted to upholding the liberal order, such as Switzerland. We gathered statements from Western companies that met all of the following conditions: (1) be in the top 100 largest companies in Russia by revenue in 2021; (2) have issued a pub- lic statement in the rst eight months of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine; (3) having been initially clas- sied as taking substantial steps towards complete withdrawal from the Russian market, or be in the process of exiting within the rst eight months of the war (some companies have been reclassied by Yale CELI since). Out of the whole population of rms, there were 25 companies that t the chosen criteria, as seen in Table 2. While sharing the three core traits, Table 2. List of companies whose statements have been studied. Revenue in Russia, million Magnitude of operations Yale CELI grade Company HQ location USD (2021) in Russia (approximations) in 2022 Industry Renault Group France 6007 15% of global earnings Withdrawal Automotive IKEA Netherlands 3854 4–5% of global sales Withdrawal Consumer goods & clothing British American Tobacco UK 3217 3%* of global revenue Withdrawal Alcohol & tobacco Carlsberg Denmark 2600 13%* of global revenue Withdrawal † Alcohol & tobacco McDonald’s USA 2300 9%* of global revenue Withdrawal Public catering Siemens Germany 1848 1% of global sales Withdrawal Electronics Shell UK 1812 N/A Withdrawal †† Energy, oil, & gas Nissan Japan 1371 N/A Withdrawal Automotive Henkel Germany 1320 5% of global revenue Withdrawal Chemical industry Nokian Tyres Finland 1274 Russia and Asia approximately 20% of net sales Withdrawal Automotive Imperial Brands UK 1136 2%* of global net revenue Withdrawal Alcohol & tobacco Fortum Finland 1090 20% of global operating earnings Withdrawal Energy, oil, & gas Baker Hughes USA 1087 Up to 5% of global sales Withdrawal Energy, oil, & gas ELKO Group Latvia 1006 N/A Withdrawal Electronics H&M Sweden 963 4% of global sales Withdrawal Consumer goods & clothing Inchcape UK 940 10% of global sales Withdrawal Automotive BASF Germany 863 1%** of global sales Withdrawal Chemical industry Enel Italy 792 N/A Withdrawal Energy, oil, & gas OBI Germany 725 N/A Withdrawal Consumer goods & clothing Schneider Electric France 706 2% of global sales Withdrawal Electronics Sylvamo USA 663 15% of global revenue Withdrawal Fast-moving consumer goods HP Inc. USA 599 N/A Withdrawal Electronics Tetra Pak Switzerland 591 N/A Withdrawal Fast-moving consumer goods Global Fashion Group Luxembourg 560 N/A Withdrawal Fashion & leisure Reckitt Benckiser Group UK 510 3%* of global revenue Withdrawal †† Consumer goods & clothing * Includes Russian and Ukrainian markets. ** Includes Russian and Belarusian markets. †The company has been since downgraded by Yale CELI without particular announcement or shaming. ††The company has been since downgraded by Yale CELI (n.d) for reneging on its promises and put on its list of shame. 274 ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 Fig. 2. The coding process. the selected companies have highly variable market presence in terms of size and history, signicantly different numbers of employees, and different trajec- tories of doing business in Russia. The purposive sampling of key players in Rus- sia that made their DAs public within the rst six months of the war is aligned with the discourse-based view, as it provides critical insights into the discursive riskwork—that is, the construction and dissemina- tion of risk narratives—by critical discursive agents that set the tone and inuence others. The discursive approach is not concerned with prospects for gen- eralizability, as it seeks in-depth exploration of the meanings and meaning-making practices within the particular context that is being studied. The temporal focus aims to zoom in on the period where geopo- litical uncertainty was highest and most disruptive, providing a context of discursive contention out of which new discourses emerge. We employed inductive coding to systematically analyse the data from the collected statements, as vi- sualized in Fig. 2. Saldaña (2021) describes a code as a word or a short phrase that assigns a certain type of attribute to a unit of the data. Coding is a process of systematically assigning different codes to excerpts of data, which allows to summarize, interpret, and structure data. After gathering the public statements, the data was entered into Quirkos, while subsequent coding was done manually. Before the initial coding cycle, statements were read in depth. This already helped to provisionally prestructure the analysis and break down statements into distinctive segments. In the rst coding step, breaking the text into small meaningful portions served to generate codes directly from the data, without much concern for theoret- ical considerations. Then, we identied similarities and patterns that helped us group codes into themes, primarily based on the situational t between the different codes. In the second step, upon reengage- ment with the statements, codes and themes were iteratively revised for coherence. To reduce bias, in this step, we employed measures of intra-coder reli- ability (by checking whether the individual authors consistently assigned the same codes) and intercoder reliability (by ensuring that our individual interpre- tations were synchronized and that there were no disagreements). Codes with insufcient data excerpts were removed. Ultimately, we ended up with four themes built out of three to ve codes each. These themes and their cor- responding constitutive codes are shown in Table 3. 3.2 Semi-structured interview In conducting our analysis and discussion, we also built upon additional original data. This included a semi-structured open-ended interview with a diplo- mat from an EU country with long-term experience ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 275 Table 3. Divestment announcements— codes and themes. Theme Code Description Total quotes Sense of responsibility Corporate culture Reference to the company’s beliefs, values, assumptions, attitudes, behaviours, and perspectives 11 Law adherence Reference to the company’s adherence to the law and proposed guidelines 9 Moral imperative Emphasis on activities and/or positions which are regarded by the company as more important than others 13 Geopolitical activism The company’s provision of nancial, psychological, or logistic support for its customers, employees, and those affected by the war 16 Geopolitical stance Reaction of the global community, foreign governmental bodies, government ofcials, and institutions to the conict and anything related to advocacy for a peaceful, diplomatic, and sustainable solution of the ongoing conict 14 Divestment motivations Sanctions Adherence to international legal regulations and sanctions 5 Operational stability Need to maintain stable and efcient operations amid disruptive climate 13 Ethical and principled stance Moral and ethical concerns, as well as irreconcilability with the realities of war 10 Responsibility and strategic alignment Need to protect employees, be accountable to the public and stakeholders 6 Divestment modality Market exit Explanation of the company’s market exit, type of market exit (i.e., divestment, e.g., sell-off), contract agreements and planned steps 43 Past divestment action Divestment steps taken up ahead of the company’s announcement 17 Impact Financial impact Impacts on the company’s nancial position, outlook, or guidance, caused by the war or as a consequence of the divestment decision 12 Energy transition Imperative of shifting to more sustainable sources, suggestions regarding the transition, and possible future challenges; reference to energy crisis and its impacts 20 Market presence Context of the magnitude of operations in Russia (or/and other Eastern European countries), such as market share, % of total revenues, number of employees, and history of the market presence 18 with Russia, who had been stationed in Moscow dur- ing the start of the Ukraine war and was acquainted from up close with the realities on the ground. We treated this interviewee as an expert (Von Soest, 2023) who was able to help us “inductively explore” the topic, and in particular to help us assess the process of doxic shifts with regard to doing business with Russia and, specically, the acts of divestment following the invasion of Ukraine, as well as to afrm some of our initial ndings and interpretations. The interview was used with obtained informed consent. 4 Findings As particular forms of articulated discourse, public statements follow certain rules and templates; in this case, a general pattern of how DApublic statements in the face of war have emerged. With a few exceptions, all statements started with an expression of sorrow, condemnation of the Russian invasion, and support for the affected citizens and institutions of Ukraine; a reection on the issuing company’s history in the Russian market followed by an explanation and rea- soning behind the ongoing or pending divestment; and a general assessment of the expected impacts of the divestment, nancial and others. In sum, all the studied press releases were predominantly oriented towards the portrayal of the issuing companies as responsible and caring organizations with a higher purpose, who prioritize their stakeholders and act according to social norms. Companies underscored the complex constellation of factors contributing to their decision to divest, most commonly the radically uncertain environment, followed by their decision not to override core corporate values. Most companies also expected a limited nancial impact, while em- phasizing increasing business operational difculties arising from the postinvasion context. Using exist- ing discourse studies on the legitimation of DAs by companies leaving Russia in 2014 (Panibratov & Brown, 2018), our ndings suggest that two fram- ing strategies, “moral evaluation” (referring to value systems) and “mythopoesis” (“constructing narra- tive structures” oriented towards the future) as well as “rationalization” (explaining the goals of action) have been particularly instrumental for companies in presenting their DAs. We unpack these ndings ac- cording to the logic of the identied themes. 276 ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 4.1 Sense of responsibility A central theme of the statements analysed was the deep sense of responsibility expressed by com- panies leaving Russia. This responsibility had a clear external dimension, as the degree of appalment and inability to come to terms with the invasion were dominant; particularly strong were the condemna- tions of violence perpetrated by Russia’s armed forces against the civilian population. Most statements at the time called for a peaceful resolution of the conict through dialogue and diplomacy. A great emphasis was put on adherence to the law—consulting the governments and acting in accordance with imposed sanctions played an essential role in their decision- making process. At the same time, this responsibility is both stakeholder-oriented and reexive, as companies ex- press deep concern for their employees and partners, as well as emphasize their normative values and be- liefs and moral “red lines” as linked to their corporate culture. These values are not only creatively articu- lated, but also legitimized through being linked to some of the practices and actions taken in response to the invasion, including the extensive support the issu- ing companies have provided for those affected by the war; the care and measures to protect their employ- ees; and prioritizing civilian safety and well-being. A relevant example is Henkel, whose statement also includes that the company’s employees have done the commendable action of “helping at the borders by distributing urgently needed goods or offering people from Ukraine a place to stay” (Henkel, 2022). In sum, the sense of responsibility has served as a preamble to the DAs, providing an assessment of the new environment and conditions in which the companies have made their decisions, while being an auxiliary in asserting their position, agency, and pur- pose well beyond a narrow prot-seeking paradigm. At the point of announcement, such statements were shielded from scrutiny. However, the fact that only two years into the war, a number of companies have reneged on their initial announcements indicates that discrepancies between words and deeds that have plagued corporate social responsibility or the dis- cursive shift towards sustainability (i.e., with the explosion of greenwashing [Vangeli et al., 2023], the “repeal” of the concept of “triple bottom line” [Elk- ington, 2018], or the shortcomings of the DEI agenda [Vangeli, 2024]) also manifest in the context of geopo- litical capitalism. Informal information by industry insiders, corroborated by media reports (Weaver & Speed, 2024), suggests that two years into the war, a number of companies that have stayed in Russia—but even those that have, for the time being, withdrawn from Russia citing normative values—show signs of fatigue with geopolitical tensions, and hope for nor- malization of business ties soon. 4.2 Divestment motivation Once the stage had been set by providing a reexive assessment of the context, DA statements proceeded towards presenting the pathway to the divestment decision. At this point, the focus was on motivations, which were discursively constructed as causal links between the structural shifts and the way the com- pany had interpreted them (i.e., through their sense of responsibility) and the company’s decision to divest. A few interrelated types of motives could be identi- ed. Most commonly, companies referred to the unpre- dictability of the environment; this was a motive common to almost all the companies in the sample. The impacts of the imposed EU sanctions and, in some cases, Russian retaliatory measures made the companies’ presence “no longer tenable” (McDon- ald’s, 2022) and “impossible” (H&M Group, 2022; OBI Group Holding, 2022), as they resulted in dis- ruptions along their supply chains and challenges in business operations. Several companies (Ingka, 2022; McDonald’s, 2022; Reckitt Benckiser Group, 2022; Syl- vamo, 2022) also mentioned that staying in the market would result in noncompliance with their corporate values, which was important if they wanted to show- case their commitment to their corporate culture and uphold their reputation in the public eye. Some of the companies went on even to explain they were “not driven by prot or making money in Russia” (Reckitt Benckiser Group, 2022), while McDonald’s poetically emphasized that commitment to their values meant they could “no longer keep the Arches shining there” (McDonald’s, 2022). However, explicit public pres- sure was mentioned by only one company (ELKO Group, 2022)—meaning that in their discourse, the companies predominantly framed their actions as proactive rather than reactive. Pursuit of business opportunities elsewhere was seldom mentioned as a potential motive (ELKO Group, 2022; Nokian Tyres, 2022). When moving towards the decision itself, there- fore, companies grounded their broader geopolitical and moralistic discourse in their preambles (i.e., an- chored in their sense of responsibility) in the language of stakeholder capitalism, while legitimizing the de- cision in the normative system in which they had operated before, that is, operational business consid- erations (i.e., deterioration of business environment and untenable risks). Thus, it is possible see a trend of companies blending their newfound role as actors in ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 277 normatively-charged geopolitics with their conven- tional role as purely economic organizations, showing that there are potentially two parallel senses of corpo- rate consciousness emerging—which eventually may end up at odds with each other. Importantly, just as in the state of the art in strategic management (Mol et al., 2023), within diplomatic circles, nancial or reputa- tional motives for divestment are considered the most convincing ones. 3 Thus, dealing with DAs directly presents the challenge in determining the extent to which the words of companies can be trusted to go beyond simple reputation management. 4.3 Divestment modality The initial response to the invasion of Ukraine of the companies whose DA statements we studied was a suspension of new investments and business operations. Some of them terminated only selected activities, such as advertising and nancing. Manage- ment termination occurred in one case as a part of a restructuring process put in place as a consequence of the invasion. However, after assessing the situation and related risks, all the companies decided to exit the market, framing the act as a measure of last resort that elimi- nated risk that had become hazardous and untenable, with no prospect of managing it in the short to medium term, given that “the circumstances ha[d] not improved and the devastating war continue[d]” (In- gka, 2022). Some statements, however, did not dwell deeply on the “business details,” including nothing more than a simple “market exit” or “business trans- fer.” Those that elaborated on the divestment process in greater depth described two ways in which market exit was completed: a sell-off and a wind-down, while other companies sold their Russian subsidiaries to buyers from the industry. Four companies pointed out distinctions in their divestment process. Two automo- tive companies (Nissan, 2022; Renault Group, 2022) specied that their sale contract included a buyback option, meaning that in a predetermined timeframe, they will be able to repurchase their shares from the buyer who acquired their company. Additionally, two companies (BASF, 2022; Tetra Pak, 2022) specied that their divestment activities excluded the produc- tion of essential items, which is “in line with [their] strongly held commitment to the principle of people’s right to access safe food” (Tetra Pak, 2022), showing that sometimes, even when dealing with a polarizing geopolitical context, the core purpose of the rm may override geopolitical responsibilities. In sum, the different modalities of divestment have been discursively articulated to ensure full trans- parency as well as to reinforce the notion that the implementation of the divestment decision is much more challenging than making the decision itself in the rst place. Yet it is precisely the modality of divest- ment that creates the greatest manoeuvring space for potentially reneging on the initially made promises, as companies can often delay the process of divest- ment on administrative and legal grounds and during the protracted process eventually change their assess- ment and evaluation of the situation, as well as the general course of action. 4.4 Impacts The statements analysed discussed tangible im- pacts of the divestment on the performance of the companies, but in a limited way. Only eight of the studied companies discussed negative nancial im- pacts in their DAs, while the others predominantly kept the discussion on impacts in the realm of un- knowns. Sell-offs were framed positively in terms of their effects on the balance sheets and liquidity. Overall, the constrained discussion on the costs of divestment served to further legitimize the risk elim- ination as a practice that was net benecial. Moreover, statements discursively linked divest- ment to the challenge of the green transition, a cause that MNEs had been already committed to. The en- ergy transition was framed as intertwined with the need to disentangle from Russian carbon-based en- ergy sources. Most companies whose DA statements we studied aim for carbon neutrality. However, the energy aspect was linked to operational concerns, for example, the European energy price crisis that took place in the aftermath of the Russian invasion, which caused a hike in commodity prices. This highlighted the dilemma that is particularly signicant for energy companies, that is, the choice “between putting pres- sure on the Russian government over its atrocities in Ukraine and ensuring stable, secure energy supplies across Europe” (Shell, 2022). In some sense, the fact that for the most part com- panies’ assessments have not cited in-depth nancial forecast reinforces the impression that in the case of the DAs in the wake of the invasion of 2022, the world has faced a new reality of two modes of rea- soning blending together, in which normative values and alignment with the geopolitical realities has be- come as important as (if not more important than) the bottom line. Or, simply, a (geo)political contagion 3 Interview with a European diplomat, November 2022. 278 ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 Fig. 3. Geopolitical riskwork in relation to Russia across time. effect of DA announcement kicked in, and as a result, companies felt more compelled to issue their political positions, even faster than they could calculate the impacts of taking such positions. 5 Discussion The discursive riskwork practices that underlined the announcing of divestment from Russia after February 24, 2022, contribute towards a signicant departure from the established ways of thinking and practice in the eld. Compared to historical prede- cessors, such as the antiapartheid movement during the 1980s and the Darfur crisis during the late 2000s, Western companies in 2022 reacted with greater speed and resolve, even before sanctions were imposed, adopting a normative rhetoric and sense of purpose. If in 2014 companies operating in the Russian mar- ket saw themselves as “hostages” (Deresky, 2016) to geopolitics, caught off guard, in 2022 they at least rhetorically demonstrated agency and resolve as they announced their departure, as a result of both con- tinuities and changes (primarily the escalation) of risk perception and appropriately adjusted discursive riskwork, as visualized in Fig. 3. Thus, geopolitical riskwork in the context of doing (or ending) business with Russia has undergone a sig- nicant change. Going back to the 1990s, Russia in the early stages of the post-Cold-War era was discursively constructed as an “emerging market” which, despite certain geopolitical concerns, was considered as full of opportunities for MNEs. Geopolitical riskwork in that sense had the task of “normalizing” the geopo- litical challenges MNEs had encountered in Russia. Risks were to be taken and, ideally, to be reframed as opportunities. Moreover, values were not such a signicant part of the geopolitical risk calculus— multinationals engaged in various nonmarket strate- gies to full the CPO (Hartwell & Devinney, 2024b; Rodgers et al., 2022) that the Russian system with the government as a central stakeholder may have imposed, sometimes pushing the boundaries of the le- gitimate and legal. The discursive riskwork goal here was to prepare companies to handle any potential turbulence along the way as business as usual. Un- der the rule of Putin, this logic remained intact even against the backdrop of geopolitical shocks, such as the shakeup in the aftermath of the Russia–Georgia war in 2008. However, with the events of 2014, MNEs started to engage in geopolitical riskwork that “problema- tized” involvement in Russia, “scrambled to assess the potential risks to their operations” (Deresky, 2016), and explored potential solutions, which in- cluded some kinds of voluntary divestment—albeit at a scale much lower than in 2022. In 2014, politi- cal responses and sanctions predominantly drove the process, and MNEs played a role of complying with regulations. Discursively, MNEs that divested from Russia in the aftermath of the 2014 events had to le- gitimize their decisions by getting rid of the stigma of divestment, employing a myriad of discursive framing strategies in front of their shareholders and stakeholders (Panibratov & Brown, 2018). The goal of the most immediate geopolitical riskwork was to somehow maintain a constructive position that would not jeopardize the companies’ market positions in Russia in the future, while ensuring not to be in viola- tion of international regulations. However, riskwork during this time included adapting to the new real- ities and bracing for an open-ended future—which, despite the instinct to be optimistic, entailed dealing with great uncertainty. Finally, a major shift took place in 2022, as there was a growing consensus that disengagement from Russia was the only justiable move forward, regard- less of its impact on balance sheets. In that sense, the burden of the stigma, for the time being, was with those that stayed and dug in. The legitimization of the decision to eliminate geopolitical risk via di- vestment in 2022 had several discursive components. Reassurance, communicated through doubling down on values, served to embed DA statements within a broader values-driven narrative that resonated with the values of a wide body of stakeholders. Expres- sions such as “we stand alongside the Ukrainian ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 279 people” (’t Hart, 2022) during this “human tragedy that is continuing to affect people and communities” (Ingka, 2022) helped anchor the companies’ positions and decisions rmly on the side of what was per- ceived not as an ethically superior, but rather the only ethnically possible side—although the right to exception in cases such as the provision of access to food and medicine served to maintain a business posture and resist adopting a warlike mentality. Cou- pling the legitimizing discursive work with actual practices and actions (often symbolic) of providing support and solidarity to affected civilians helped further advance the values-rooted position. However, the decision could only be legitimized by adhering to the principles of transparency and accountability to stakeholders, even if the actual tangible impacts were disclosed in a limited way. In this sense, para- doxically, the statements have been accompanied by ethical clarity, tactical resolve, and long-term strategic uncertainty. Thus, our ndings move the debate beyond the commonplace focus on sanctions as a key driving force behind divestment (Evenett & Pisani, 2023). Ad- vancing a discursive view, of course, does not mean relativizing the tangible regulatory considerations that may have driven divestment, such as the scope of sanctions imposed by the West. When comparing the sanctions of 2014 and 2022, we noticed that the former targeted predominantly Russian oligarchs and indi- viduals close to the Russian government, which did not prevent Russia from escalating the situation eight years later (van Bergeijk, 2022). On the other hand, the 2022 sanctions have been far more extensive as they include restrictions on multiple core industries such as nance, technology, energy, and transport. At the same time, there has been an increasing impression that sanctions—both those adopted in 2014 and those adopted in 2022—have had limited success. The signicance of sanctions notwithstanding, our analysis shows that when trying to legitimize the decision to divest, sanctions were discursively down- played, as companies engaged in what some experts dubbed “self-sanctions” (Demertzis et al., 2022). The core of their “self-sanctioning” discursive riskwork was centred on the sense of responsibility and nor- mative allegiance, irrespective of the fact whether sanctions—or the expectations that sanctions would soon be imposed— may, in addition to their direct im- pact, have or have not contributed to the change in the framing of the broader context by companies. In that sense, most of the corporate exits in fact go “beyond the bare minimum legally required by international sanctions” (Yale CELI, 2024). Importantly, beyond the sanctions, there have been discursive shifts in the eld of geopolitics itself, which, in some sense, have been the prerequisite both for the enactment of sanctions and for change in thinking in the corporate world (Eckert, 2024). In sharp contrast to 2014, Western countries that had had decades-long close economic cooperation with Russia (e.g., Germany) swiftly changed course, which immediately intensied risks for MNEs. Investors have also penalized those that have continued do- ing business with Russia (Sonnenfeld et al., 2022). This profound doxic shift in the West, coupled with the wide diffusion of a new “bloc” mentality against the backdrop of what seems like a “new cold war,” poses the mostly unspoken but tangible risk of not regulatory but geopolitical compliance, or corporate geopolitical responsibility. The anxiety that stems from the idea of companies breaking the ranks in a situation of a new cold war is partially amplied by the lack of certainty on what consequences can geopolitically “irresponsible” companies face outside of sanctions regimes. That the new geopoliticized en- vironment is much less predictable—not least because it allows for political decisions “by exception” that can override “peacetime” procedures—further exac- erbates such anxieties. In this sense, probing into the role of anxiety—framed not as fear, but rather as the embodied response to uncertainty, which profoundly affects discursive practices and both symbolic and material actions—is one potential line of inquiry in the future. In this sense, our analysis also addresses another commonplace assumption, that is, that in geopoliti- cal crisis situations, reputational risks are dominant. While reputational risks and a fear of “cancellation” due to sustaining business with Russia amid the war was certainly a factor that sped up divestment an- nouncement, it is important to note in this context that at least some companies have been rethinking their purpose as social organizations whose GCR is to contribute to the upholding of the liberal rules-based order (Freeman, 2022). The situation of exception and the wartime logic infused in all forms of socio- economic activity after February 24, 2022, creates a similar sense of duty for MNEs in their home markets and in markets crucial for their survival and growth (i.e., NATO countries). In this sense, the object of risk that discursive riskwork practices at the onset of the Ukraine war aimed to address was ultimately the expected high cost of not conforming to the new IB geopoliticized doxa. Here, in addition to the existing concepts of GCR and geopolitical citizenship (Eckert, 2024; Freeman, 2022), it is worth contemplating the emergence of liberal “geopolitical corporate obliga- tions.” The notion of obligation imposed by a liberal order in a state of emergency adds a new layer of identication and positioning of the MNEs beyond 280 ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 identity politics or national representation, but rather as rooted in a values-based geopolitical community, and now called up on fullling a geopolitical role and duty. In some sense, the idea of geopolitical obligations echoes discussions on the global “neomer- cantilist moment” (Steinberg, 2023) that restores a global constellation of “growing state intervention, a new arms race, and geopolitical rivalry between the two largest world powers” similar to one of the 1970s (Ciravegna et al., 2023). However, a distinctive fea- ture of the present-day dynamics is that companies pro-actively have taken on a normatively liberal role, as standing for Ukraine has become greatly synony- mous with standing for liberal democracy and the Western ideals in general terms. However, while pro-active, MNEs have not blindly adopted geopolitical identities or reinforced geopo- litical agendas. When announcing divestment, com- panies prioritized geopolitical considerations over detailed operational aspects, that is, they exten- sively addressed the geopolitical situation and ex- pressed their value-driven position, while often only briey addressing the modalities and impacts of the (prospective) divestment. However, while such a strategic discursive practice aimed to align companies with the emerging Western bloc, companies have also produced their idiosyncratic discourse on the war it- self. As many have idealistically called for peaceful resolution, they have somewhat inadvertently pro- jected a vision that stands in contrast with the NATO approach of arming Ukraine and postponing peace talks. In that sense, companies exhibit some aspects of agents for change, although, perhaps, lack the means to impose their agenda (as it seems obvious that it will be states, and in particular powerful states, who will have the greatest say in resolving the conict). From a liberal perspective, the infusion with ide- ological morality can be seen as heeding Ghoshal’s (2005) call for adopting a more responsible norma- tive approach to IB managerial practice. However, if the discursive perspective is further deepened, there is an important caveat to this claim: the ideological dimension of geopolitical discursive riskwork is not about aligning with a specic geopolitically correct stance (e.g., support for Ukraine or being anti-Russia) nor a national sense of identity (Vaara et al., 2021), but rather about carving out a sense of belonging to the emerging community of Western actors, adding a potent layer of a corporation’s identity as a geopo- litical actor, or realizing their geopolitical citizenship (Eckert, 2024). Companies used public statements an- nouncing divestment to signal their alignment with this collective identity. To some extent, this touches upon sociopsychological explanations such as the bandwagon effect, as this process involves aligning with a larger group or trend and potentially mimick- ing the actions of others. However, sociopsycholog- ical explanations typically refer to spontaneous con- formity due to social pressure. Discursive riskwork, however, involves iterative, dialogical processes of deliberate and strategic communication efforts aimed at (re)interpreting the world and one’s position in it, which is especially evident in the case of the reac- tions to the Ukraine war. The collective and relational component can be potentially linked to studies of dif- fusion and, in particular, isomorphism (Brown, 2021; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). However, the possibility that adopting a morally just position on the short- term will be reneged on in the medium- to long-term, remains high, as MNEs are still to convince the at- tentive audience that principles indeed matter over prot. 6 Conclusion This paper reinforces the notion that highly impact- ful outlier events are far more common than assumed and that the reality of IB is one signicantly driven by “non-normality” (Beamish & Hasse, 2022). It has provided an in-depth study of geopolitical risk man- agement practices employed by MNEs in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, by emphasizing the discursive riskwork. The paper contributes to the broader discursive turn in IB (Treviño & Doh, 2021), and more narrowly to the literature of geopolitical risk management prac- tices or, rather, the practice of engaging both with long-term shifts and acute geopolitical emergency, as it showcases MNEs’ use of ad hoc discursive prac- tices to legitimize their divestment decisions, thereby moving beyond the traditional focus on sanctions and regulatory compliance, as well as reputation management, highlighting the doxic shifts in which geopolitical thinking infused with normative values has become the new normal in IB (Eckert, 2024), which can be contrasted to previous divestment cam- paigns, including those targeting Russia. Secondly, the paper further elaborates the nascent concept of GCR, underscoring the evolving role of MNEs as geopolitical actors committed to upholding the liberal world order. Conceptually, it advances the work on “riskwork” (Maguire & Hardy, 2016; Power, 2016b) by conducting a pioneering study on riskwork against the backdrop of geopolitical uncertainty. Method- ologically and empirically, it contributes to the study of corporate public statements announcing divest- ment. Yet the paper faces certain limitations. In particular, the study of DA statements—carefully crafted and polished communication products—misses out on ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS REVIEW 2024;26:265–283 281 what in theory are known to be contentious processes of discursive struggles over frames and language that take place behind the scenes. Moreover, while the paper has studied DAs issued within a certain time- frame, extending the timeframe and/or comparing statements issued at different times can offer further insight into the processes we have studied. Future research could address these limitations by under- taking in-depth qualitative case studies (Beamish & Hasse, 2022) or, pending availability, internal corpo- rate communications, to be able to trace the process of formulating MNEs’ positions, decisions, and legit- imation strategies. Expanding the sample of compa- nies studied would of course be highly benecial as well, in particular by taking into account non-Western MNEs or those that do not subscribe to the liberal scripts. Finally, future studies should closely examine whether companies have followed through on their announcements, in light of Yale CELI (n.d) publishing a list of those who have reneged on their promises. Finally, this paper has signicant managerial impli- cations. First, it implies that a proactive geopolitical riskwork approach is needed in the contemporary context in which business operates. Second, in a “business-as-unusual approach,” managers have to pay increasing attention to normative debates against the backdrop of dynamic geopolitical uncertainty. Third, as a result of the synergistic effects of changes in the geopolitical environment, changes in the eld doxa, and changes in behaviours of companies, com- panies are increasingly seen as part of a liberal geopolitical community, which poses an urgent chal- lenge of further developing capacities to be able to meet the objectives of the increasingly important GCR and geopolitical citizenship. Funding statement Anastas Vangeli acknowledges nancial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding No. P5-0177). References Aggarwal, V . K. (2001). Corporate market and nonmarket strategies in Asia: A conceptual framework. 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