In today’s volatile global landscape, businesses with regional and international ambitions face a rapidly evolving set of challenges from geopolitical uncertainty to domestic regulatory unpredictability.
For companies operating in developing markets like Southeast Asia, success is no longer just about market access or supply chain efficiency. It’s about resilience, agility, and the ability to interpret policy environments across borders. Ultimately being able to positively shape and influence the policy ecosystem.
As the founding chairman of the Malaysia Global Business Forum, I’ve seen firsthand how policy risk, media dynamics, and rapid regulatory changes can derail even the most well-intentioned business strategies. This happens to companies with existing regional footprints or those just dipping their toe into Asia for the first time. Underappreciated, yet essential tools in navigating these risks is highly active government relations team, an area that most companies underinvest in until it’s too late.
While ASEAN provides a platform for economic cooperation, every country within it maintains its own unique political and regulatory landscape. So, if the goal post can move, how do leadership teams in London, Tokyo or New York make the right decisions?
It’s this local depth, deep relationships, contextual understanding, and sustained engagement that enables regional cohesion and allows global strategies to be meaningfully implemented.
The most effective teams are often a combination of internal capacity and external expertise with deeper local or regional knowledge. A combination that allows knowledge and access leverage while not digging a massive hole in the already stretched budget.
In Southeast Asia, where governments play an active role in business through government linked investment companies and wealth funds. This dynamic means that regulation, licensing, and matters like disaster or crisis response have a government involvement, in some cases with the political leadership of the day flavour.
Companies outside this dynamic must proactively shape policy, not merely react to it. Government relations is a frontline, in the trenches effort, a discipline that builds trust through direct relationships, which in today’s environment is as much a form of capital as financial reserves.
We have seen through the research of the team at the Crisis Management Centre that trust is not monolithic. There is positive trust, where businesses are seen as contributors to national development and stability, and negative trust, where they are viewed with suspicion, especially in times of tension or crisis. In the latter case, companies find themselves increasingly exposed, to hostile activism, regulatory clampdowns, and reputational risk.
Media misinterpretation also plays a critical role in crisis amplification. In the absence of established media relationships, businesses find it difficult to correct the record during a crisis. Moreover, broad digital reporting means that data points become fodder for domestic media, activists, or competitors. This is where crisis management must intersect with government relations.
The ability to understand first and second order effects of a message is essential. What you say today could impact investor confidence, regulatory positioning, and public sentiment tomorrow. The message might be pitch perfect in market but tone deaf in a market on the other side of the world, unfortunately that’s where your main investor group is based.
Geopolitically, companies must also consider the implications of their headquarter domicile. Multinationals headquartered in countries with aggressive or unpredictable leadership face unique scrutiny in Southeast Asia and other developing regions. They are often seen through a geopolitical lens, not just a business one.
In this context, a misstep by your home government can quickly become your problem on the ground fuelling distrust, complicating negotiations, or triggering backlash. Your brand or recently renovated outlet becomes the focus of angry protestors.
Drilling down to the next level, the lack of clear supply chain policy in the region adds another layer of risk. Inconsistent regulations across borders create uncertainty that only strong government relations efforts, underpinned by resilience planning, can mitigate.
Resilience is not just about operational continuity, it’s about the ability to anticipate, absorb, and adapt to policy shocks, media storms, or geopolitical shifts. The hard work put in during scenario workshops and the knowledge built up over years of media monitoring will pay off.
In times of crisis, what was once a long-term “over the horizon” risk is no more your horizon is now. The ability to push for policy reform or regulatory clarification disappears overnight. That is why consistent engagement, before, during, and after a crisis is essential. You can’t build influence overnight, and you certainly can’t build trust in the middle of a storm.
The excitement of the growth possibilities in ASEAN remains exciting, now there is a need to deepen your understanding of each market and read the fine print of the social contract that businesses now are held to by an evolving consumer base.
This article was written by Nordin Abdullah, Founder of the Crisis Management Centre and Founding Chairman of the Malaysia Global Business Forum. Nordin is currently in the midst of writing a book on ‘Reputational Security’.
*Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of NHA – News Hub Asia. 