While corporate diplomacy is discussed as stakeholder engagement allowing multinational companies to manage relationships, engagement approaches to public relations suggest that organizations, through interaction with their stakeholders, create social capital. This study integrates both approaches, exploring how corporate diplomacy develops social capital. Based on in-depth interviews with public relations executives (N = 25) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), our results indicate that corporate diplomacy in the UAE relies heavily on stakeholder engagement, particularly with governmental institutions, and consequently builds on dialog and collective decision-making. While governmental engagement is mainly conducted through personal relationship cultivation, engagement with other multinational corporations is based on more distant relationships. However, both approaches appear to create social capital and provide social resources, including loyalty and trust. We conclude that by employing different engagement strategies, corporate diplomacy supports both the corporation and various stakeholders in the host country, and close by discussing implications and future research directions.

虽然企业外交被讨论为允许跨国公司管理关系的利益相关者参与，但公共关系的参与方法表明组织通过与其利益相关者的互动来创造社会资本。本研究将这两种方法结合起来，探索企业外交如何发展社会资本。根据对阿拉伯联合酋长国 (UAE) 公共关系主管 (N = 25) 的深入采访，我们的结果表明，阿联酋的企业外交在很大程度上依赖于利益相关者的参与，尤其是与政府机构的参与，因此建立在对话和集体决策。政府参与主要是通过个人关系的培养来进行，而与其他跨国公司的参与则是基于更远距离的关系。然而，这两种方法似乎都在创造社会资本并提供社会资源，包括忠诚度和信任。我们得出的结论是，通过采用不同的参与策略，企业外交支持企业和东道国的各种利益相关者，并通过讨论影响和未来的研究方向来结束。