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Multinational enterprises (MNEs) respond to geopolitical pressure in four broad ways: they try to shape political relationships, adapt operations while staying engaged, limit further exposure, or leave. Which path is feasible depends on the firm’s political capabilities, how reversible its investment is, and how relations between its home and host countries are changing. A corrected 2025 review of 93 academic papers brings these responses into one framework using real-options theory and the political-capabilities perspective.

What the 2025 review examined

Stephanie Tonn Goulart Moura, Thomas C. Lawton and Damian Tobin published the open-access review in the International Journal of Management Reviews. The publisher records first online publication on 17 April 2025 and a correction on 28 November 2025; the corrected version reports a sample of 93 papers. The authors searched across strategy, international business and management research, then integrated the fragmented findings into a response framework.

This is a synthesis and theory-building study, not a single-firm experiment. It does not claim one average financial loss, probability of exit or other headline causal effect. Its contribution is to explain why firms facing similar geopolitical shocks can make very different choices.

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Why geopolitical risk is more than a host-country score

The authors define geopolitics as the study of how geography shapes politics in international relations. For an MNE, uncertainty is therefore relational: it arises from changing relations and power struggles between the home and host countries, not only from conditions inside the host country.

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A conventional political-risk assessment might rate a host government’s stability, regulation or security environment. That assessment can miss interstate effects such as diplomatic retaliation, sanctions, investment screening, export controls, pressure from the home government, or a sudden change in the host government’s treatment of firms from a particular nationality. The same factory, data center or research operation can face a different risk profile when the two governments’ relationship deteriorates.

Nationality and political position also matter. A company with trusted access to officials, credible local partners and experience managing government relations may have options unavailable to a less connected rival. Finally, an investment’s reversibility matters: a staged project can be delayed or resized, while specialized facilities, supply chains and long-lived licenses are harder to unwind.

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The four strategic responses

The review organizes the literature around a flexibility–commitment trade-off. The table shows how political-capability strength and investment flexibility combine with engagement and exposure to home–host diplomatic change.

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Response Political capabilities Investment position Typical engagement Likely outcome
Shaping engagement Strong Flexible enough to support continued maneuvering Active efforts with home and host governments and other stakeholders Continued operation while influencing the political environment
Adaptive engagement Insufficient for active shaping Some flexibility remains Selective government and stakeholder engagement paired with operational changes Operation continues in a redesigned or reduced form
Non-engagement Weak or unusable Uncertainty is high and flexibility is constrained Exposure is limited; the firm avoids deeper political involvement Existing activity may continue, but expansion and new commitments are withheld
Exit Weak Highly committed investment with few practical options Withdrawal, divestment or shutdown Operations leave the market or relationship

Shaping engagement

Firms with strong political capabilities can seek to influence home–host relations rather than simply absorb their effects. They may explain their economic contribution to officials, work through industry associations, build coalitions with local stakeholders, or use established government relationships to argue for exemptions, stable rules or channels of dialogue. As the authors put it, “when MNEs have strong political capabilities, they often opt for a shaping engagement response to influence home–host country relations.” Shaping is not a guarantee of success; it is the ability to attempt influence when diplomatic conditions are still contestable.

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Adaptive engagement

When political capabilities are not strong enough to reshape the relationship, a firm may still operate by changing what it does. Adaptation can involve slowing or staging capital expenditure, switching suppliers, altering ownership or governance arrangements, separating sensitive activities, changing logistics, or narrowing the market served. This response preserves some presence while reducing the investment’s exposure to the disputed political fault line.

Non-engagement

Non-engagement is a deliberate limit on exposure, not necessarily an immediate departure. A company may pause expansion, decline a government-backed project, avoid lobbying on the underlying dispute, or keep existing operations at a minimum level. The choice is most likely when uncertainty is high, political influence is weak and the firm cannot easily redesign a committed investment.

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Exit

Exit becomes the available response when weak political capabilities meet an investment whose options are largely exhausted. Withdrawal can mean selling assets, transferring ownership, closing a facility or ending a market relationship. The framework treats exit as an outcome of constrained choices, rather than assuming that every geopolitical shock makes departure optimal.

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How real-options theory explains flexibility

Real-options theory treats an investment’s flexibility as an economic option. A firm that commits in stages can wait for more information, expand if relations improve, scale back if they worsen, switch suppliers, redesign the project or abandon a later phase. The value of waiting or changing course rises when geopolitical uncertainty is high.

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Committed investments have fewer escape routes. Specialized equipment, sunk construction costs, regulatory approvals tied to a location and dependence on a particular cross-border corridor can make a nominally reversible decision practically irreversible. Political capabilities increase the value of the remaining options because the firm is better positioned to obtain information, negotiate accommodations and coordinate with authorities. Weak capabilities narrow those options, so the same uncertainty can lead to adaptation, non-engagement or exit.

A practical decision sequence for managers

  1. Map the relationship, not just the host. Track diplomatic ties, sanctions exposure, investment-screening rules, export controls and pressure from both governments. Identify which changes are bilateral and which are broader regional or global measures.
  2. Separate assets by reversibility. List projects that can be delayed, resized, relocated or sold, and distinguish them from assets with high sunk costs or specialized local dependencies.
  3. Audit political capabilities. Assess government-relations expertise, local legitimacy, trusted intermediaries, industry-association access, compliance capacity and the credibility of the firm’s economic contribution. Capabilities must be judged in both countries, not assumed to transfer automatically.
  4. Match the response to the option set. Strong capabilities and usable flexibility support shaping engagement. Some flexibility with limited influence supports adaptation. High uncertainty with few flexible choices favors non-engagement. Exit is the rational contingency when influence is weak and commitment leaves no workable redesign.
  5. Reassess continuously. Geopolitical conditions can change faster than the physical investment cycle. Recalculate the value of waiting, expansion, redesign and withdrawal whenever diplomatic relations, regulations or political capabilities change.

Implications for policymakers

Governments often evaluate foreign direct investment as if firms respond only to domestic taxes, infrastructure and market size. The framework indicates that sovereignty-oriented actions can also alter the perceived relationship risk attached to a country. Measures intended to protect national autonomy may prompt firms to delay, limit or cancel investment, creating economic costs through lost capital, jobs, technology transfer and supply-chain links.

Predictable rules, transparent review procedures, credible dispute channels and communication with foreign investors can preserve option value even when governments disagree on security or strategic matters. Policymakers cannot eliminate geopolitical uncertainty, but they can avoid adding avoidable ambiguity to it.

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What remains unresolved

The review’s research agenda calls for better ways to measure geopolitics as a dynamic home–host relationship. Future studies need to distinguish different kinds of diplomatic change, follow how political capabilities vary across firms and countries, and observe how the value of real options changes as conditions evolve. More evidence is also needed on heterogeneous firms: a state-owned enterprise, a globally diversified manufacturer and a small technology company may face the same diplomatic event with very different capabilities and commitments.

The central lesson is therefore conditional rather than deterministic. Geopolitics does not produce one universal MNE response. It changes the value of the options a firm has, while political capabilities determine how many of those options can be used.

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