ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the importance of regional institutional and normative discursive environments for a better understanding of how domestic and international business and management activities have been conducted in Latin America since the end of the Cold War (March and Olsen 1989; Campbell 1998; Debrix 2003; Steffek 2003; Jack et al. 2008). Whereas in terms of institutions we focus on formal intergovernmental institutions, when analyzing the normative discourses, informal practices and the role of non-state actors are considered because the importance of the latter in the international politics has increased dramatically in the last twenty years (Mathews 1997). We argue that along with practices and discourses of state and non-state actors within formal institutions and outside them, normative consensuses emerge, which in their turn create new opportunities and constraints on international business and management. Although regional institutions and normative discourses are intertwined with those on the global level, we emphasize the specifi city of the region. A proper analysis of the environment in which international business and management take place must therefore include not only the global and national levels, but also the regional.1
