Surviving the Arab Spring: socially beneficial product portfolios and resilience to political shock

Purpose This paper aims to explore the ideas that social legitimacy (acceptance by the public within a country) serves as a hedge against political risk and that the perceived social value of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs’) products or services improves firms’ social legitimacy and so resilience to political shock. Design/methodology/approach Drawing from a unique data concerning global construction activity and taking advantage of the Arab...