Public diplomacy is an increasing popular preoccupation of governments worldwide, especially aimed at achieving acceptance of their foreign policies abroad, in which corporations have traditionally played a secondary role. However, as it happens with governments, corporations have understood long ago the challenges of being accepted abroad. In this paper the authors suggest that 'corporate diplomacy' is also a process by which corporations intend to be recognized as representatives of something that might be a concept or a country or its related values. In this case, it is essential to create a sincere adaptation of the corporate values to the societal values if a corporation wishes to have a symbiotic relationship with key stakeholders. 'Corporate diplomacy' thus becomes a complex process of commitment towards society, and in particular with its public institutions, whose main added value to the corporation is a greater degree of legitimacy or "license-to-operate," which in turn improves its power within a given social system. By proposing a certain notion of 'corporate diplomacy' the authors intend to evocate an important role that modern corporations are increasingly playing through their public relations practice and which might be shaping the definition of corporations as institutions within society.

Regulatory agencies can provide advice to support developers of digital technologies for medicines use, but what are the best strategies to maximize the chance of a successful regulatory interaction? Here, EMA and industry representatives comment on the experience so far.

Purpose – This paper aims to consider the development of corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects by Catoca, a diamond mining company in Angola, along with the effectiveness of these projects, and the benefits to stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach – The research method used was direct observation and semi-structured interview with executives and administrative employees of the company, and collaborators of CSR projects, during 2010, 2011 and 2012. We also analyse documents about CSR projects developed by Catoca and identify the challenges faced. Findings – The management of CSR projects is hampered by the low disclosure of results and the absence of social indicators. This may generate inadequate results compared to investment. The assumption of low stakeholder expectation and the absence of social indicators may lead to neo-philanthropic or preconceived actions that ignore local peculiarities. Research limitations/implications – This study is limited to one company, and the lack of social indicators means it is difficult to evaluate the reported results. Practical implications – This paper improves understanding of the challenges involved in CSR projects in Africa and may also be useful for companies that develop CSR projects, drawing attention to issues that could compromise the proper use of resources and hamper results. Social implications – This study considers Angola, which is using its natural resources to boost economic and social development, establish partnerships with foreign companies and encourage the development of CSR programmes which often end up filling gaps left by the absence of government action. Originality/value – This study contributes to the largely under-researched area of CSR projects in Angola.

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In the past decade, the rush to technology has created several flaws in terms of managing computers, applications, and middleware and information systems. Therefore, organizations struggle to understand how these elements behave. Even today, as Enterprise Architectures grow in significance and are acknowledged as advantageous artifacts to help manage change, their benefit to the organization has yet to be fully explored. In this paper, the authors focus on the challenge of real-time information systems evaluation, using the enterprise architecture as a boundary object and a base for communication. The solution proposed is comprised of five major steps: establishing a strong conceptual base on the evaluation of information systems, defining a high level language for this activity, extending an architecture creation pipeline, creating a framework that automates it, and the framework’s implementation. The conceptual framework proposed avoids imprecise definitions of quality and quality attributes, was materialized in a model-eval-display loop framework, and was implemented using Model Driven Software Development practices and tools. Finally, a prototype is applied to a real-world scenario to verify the conceptual solution in practice.