Today's world is characterised by the emergence of sudden and profound changes that lead to antagonistic processes and affect most countries and populations of the world. Although, in the face of increased global uncertainty, countries are paying more attention to security and defense issues of foreign policy, the well-being of the population remains an important source of legitimacy of politicians. And since small countries are often much more involved in and dependent on international trade than large countries, commercial diplomacy, due to its simplicity, directness and the possibility of solving problems quickly, can be an effective and important tool for strengthening the existing bilateral economic links of the domestic economy and opening the door to new, promising markets. Commercial diplomacy is particularly important for small and medium-sized enterprises (hereafter: SMEs), which, in the absence of financial and human resources, face greater information asymmetries and more constraints, as well as risks in entering the international arena. In doctoral thesis, we therefore wanted to establish whether Slovenian SMEs are satisfied with the assistance and services provided by commercial diplomacy and we were also interested in the assessment of commercial diplomats on the readiness of SMEs and their approach to internationalisation. We identified and evaluated the factors influencing commercial diplomacy, analysed the importance of the interaction of commercial diplomacy with SMEs and explored the importance of the individual and staffing policy in commercial diplomacy. We were interested in whether the importance of commercial diplomacy increases with the distance of markets and whether commercial diplomacy can contribute to overcoming internal barriers and facilitating the decision of SMEs to start internationalisation activities. The research work was carried out in phases using different scientific methods. The theoretical part of the research was deductive in nature and aimed at examining existing literature and findings. The empirical part is based on the case study of Slovenia, whereas the case studies of Austria and Serbia serve as control variables. The main method of the empirical part is a semi-structured, in-depth individual interview. The analysis of existing sources and the horizontal comparison of the responses of relevant stakeholders confirms the mutual dissatisfaction and the gap in mutual understanding, supply and demand of commercial diplomacy and SMEs. We note that the importance of commercial diplomacy increases with the distance of markets and plays a greater role in the initial stages of internationalisation of SMEs. Commercial diplomacy can also contribute to overcoming some of the internal barriers of SMEs, thus facilitating the decision to start internationalising. The long-term stability of the structure and organisational model of commercial diplomacy, as well as staffing policies, play an important role in this respect. Individuals, commercial diplomats, are even more important than the structure of commercial diplomacy.
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