The local-global interplays between governments, businesses, and social actors are hot both in academia and the practical stage. Governments around the world have become more aware of paying attention to businesses and society when making policies. Many businesses have learned to consider government actions and society’s needs when making strategic decisions. Furthermore, social actors are encouraged to leverage their bottom-up power to compensate for government/business initiatives to meet society’s needs. A growing body of literature in various areas such as public policy, corporate social responsibilities (CSR), and nonprofit organizations (NPOs) has dealt with government-business-society interactions.

However, there is a paucity of knowledge about the mentioned interactions in national turmoil situations. More importantly, conditions such as crises, substantial institutional voids, or the emergence of disruptive technologies call for more effective and faster interactions between the three players. During turmoils, different forms of interplays are shaped. For example, formal institutions might fail to adapt thoroughly to the situations due to a lack of resources or ground knowledge about issues and slow bureaucratic processes. These weaknesses would even make the crisis worse. With that being said, we expect that interplays between governments, businesses, and communities become more significant and even shape novel institutional patterns.

In this symposium, with Montreal Local-Global Research Group (MLGRG) members, we intend to explore the interplays between the three actors in turmoil situations. The participants have been studying exciting trends in Canada and throughout the world, which could be the harbingers of things to come. We believe that this theme could add to our understanding of the institutional changes during unusual situations.