The Politics
of Social Evaluation

How national security concerns shape the evaluation of firms, investments, and technologies

National Security & Social Evaluation
in Global Business

Organisations today operate in an environment of intensified social evaluation. In global business, national security has become an increasingly consequential concern that shape how foreign firms, cross-border investments, and strategic technologies are judged. Firms are judged not only by their performance, products, services, or formal responsibilities, but also through political, ideological, geopolitical, and moral lenses. Governments, regulators, media, employees, job seekers, investors, communities, and business partners all interpret what the firms do, what they represent, and whom they are seen to serve.

My primary research programme examines how national security concerns emerge around foreign firms, cross-border investments, and strategic technologies, and how such concerns shape their social evaluation. Across this work, I explore how organisations become objects of national security scrutiny, how evaluations are formed and contested, and how these judgments affect organisational identity, stakeholder relationships, market access, and strategic action.

Through this work, I seek to explain when and why foreign firms, investments, and technologies trigger national security concerns, whose judgments gain authority, and how firms respond.

About Me

I am a researcher, lecturer, and consultant based at the University of Edinburgh.

My research focuses on how national security concerns shape the social evaluation of foreign firms, cross-border investments, and strategic technologies. I am particularly interested in how governments and other audiences form and contest their judgements, and how they affect organisational legitimacy, identity, stakeholder relationships, market access, and strategic action.

My work is especially relevant to multinational enterprises navigating geopolitical tensions and national security scrutiny. As an extension of my broader research on social evaluation, I also study third-sector organisations operating within complex systems of commissioning, funding, partnership, and public accountability.

My Research

My primary research programme examines how national security concerns emerge around foreign firms, cross-border investments, and strategic technologies, and how they shape social evaluation and corporate responses. It considers how commercial organisations and activities become exposed to national security scrutiny, how judgments are formed and contested, and how those judgments become consequential.

My research has appeared in leading academic journals, such as Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Public Management Review, Journal of International Business Policy, and Strategic Organization.

Reseaerch on National Security and Global Business

Lai, K. & Potocnik, K. 2026. Recruitment in times of crisis: The impact of negative signals and CSR on job seekers’ attraction to multinational enterprises. Journal of Management Studies. http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.70109 (FT50, ABS4)
- This paper shows how accusations that an MNE poses a national security threat function as negative signals in recruitment, reducing job seekers’ organisational attraction and job-pursuit intentions. It also demonstrates the limits of CSR in offsetting the effects of such crises.
Lai, K., & Fortwengel, J. (2025) Constructing an organizational identity with political ideology: The case of Huawei, 1987-2020. Strategic Organization. https://doi.org/10.1177/14761270251327988 (ABS3)
- This historical study explains why politically embedded identities can become a source of constraint when multinational corporations later face national security scrutiny amid geopolitical tensions.
Lai, K. (2021). National security and FDI policy ambiguity: A commentary. Journal of International Business Policy. https://doi.org/10.1057/s42214-020-00087-1 (ABS3)
- This commentary examines the national security screening of inward FDI and explains why ambiguity has become a defining feature of related policy. It argues that ambiguity creates space for political and corporate actors to advance competing agendas through the securitisation of foreign investment.
Lai, K. (2025). How foreign investments by multinational enterprises become national security threats: An organizational field perspective. In B. Christiansen & J. Branch (Eds.), Impacts of Geoeconomics and Geopolitics on International Business. IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3373-1265-1.ch007
- This chapter develops the Dual-Field Framework to explain how particular foreign investments come to be constructed as national security threats. It highlights the roles of domestic politics and geopolitics in this field-driven process.

Research on Social Evaluation, Organizations and Power

Lai, K., Morgan, G., & Morris, J. (2020). ‘Eating bitterness’ in a Chinese multinational: Identity regulation in context. Organization Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840619835271 (ABS4)
Lai, K. 2026. Developing a power perspective on public service contracting: Evidence from Scotland’s homelessness sector. Public Management Review. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2026.2653081 (ABS4)

Advisory, Workshops & Executive Education

I provide research-based advisory, workshops, and executive education for organisations navigating complex evaluative environments. My work helps leaders and managers understand how their organisations are interpreted, where legitimacy challenges emerge, how relationships are affected, and what forms of strategic engagement are possible.

This work is particularly relevant to multinational enterprises facing national security scrutiny; HR, employer branding, and communications teams managing crisis-related reputation challenges; and third-sector organisations navigating commissioning, funding dependence, partnership expectations, and public accountability.

The aim is not simply to manage reputation. It is to understand the evaluative environment in which the organisation operates: how judgments are formed and contested, what meanings are attached to the organisation, how evaluations move across stakeholder groups, where trust is vulnerable, and how the organisation can act while protecting legitimacy and strategic agency.

At the centre of my advisory and workshop work is the SENSE framework: Signals, Evaluators, Narratives, Stakeholder Relationships, and Engagement. It translates research on social evaluation into a diagnostic and strategic framework for organisations under external scrutiny.

S — Signals

What signals are being sent by the organisation itself and by third parties, intentionally or unintentionally? What makes the organisation appear trustworthy, appropriate, risky, valuable, responsible, or problematic?

E — Evaluators

Who is watching, judging, regulating, funding, commissioning, or evaluating the organisation?

N — Narratives

What meanings are attached to the organisation through media, public policy, social discourses, or stakeholder storytelling?

S — Stakeholder Relationships

How do external pressures shape relationships with commissioners, regulators, employees, candidates, partners, communities,

or host country societies?

E — Engagement

What can the organisation realistically say, change, negotiate, resist, or prioritise while maintaining trust, legitimacy, and effectiveness?

Example
Workshops

Geopolitics, National Security, and MNEs

For MNE leaders, public affairs teams, trade bodies, investors, professional service firms, and organisations exposed to national security scrutiny amidst geopolitical tensions.
This session helps participants understand how national security narratives, foreignness, ownership, and identity shape stakeholder trust and strategic options.

Identity Under Scrutiny

For leadership teams, communications teams, values-led organisations, international organisations, and organisations whose identity, history, values, or ownership are potentially perceived as problematic.
This session helps participants understand how organisational identity, values, history, and narratives are interpreted differently across audiences and contexts, and how these interpretations can affect trust, legitimacy, and strategic options.

Recruitment and HRM in Times of Crisis

For HR leaders, employer branding teams, recruiters, and communications teams.
This session helps organisations understand how negative signals, third-party narratives, and public crises affect organisational attractiveness and employer reputation, and how organisations can respond with credible and targeted communication.

Navigating Commissioning Pressures

For charity leaders, nonprofit managers, service managers, local authority partners, commissioners, funders, and organisations involved in public service delivery.
This session helps participants understand how commissioning, funding, accountability, and partnership dynamics affect service quality, organisational voice, innovation, and strategic choices.

The Politics of Social Evaluation

National Security & Social Evaluation in Global Business