This paper presents preliminary results from a research focused on the internationalization process of a Brazilian company in the oil sector. Grounded on the literature of international political economy the authors show the importance of the development of an approach in international management that recognizes the interfaces between public and private and, more specifically between government and transnational corporations, headquarters and subsidiaries. This paper suggests that this approach allow researchers to recognize the governance-management interface that have been neglected by the mainstream literature of international management.