Disruptive events in strategy and international business research

Abstract

We are entering an era filled with disruptive events, yet current research in strategy and international business has paid insufficient attention to the nature of these events and their far-reaching impacts. To address this gap, we introduce event system theory (EST) into these fields, offering a critical lens to analyze the complexity of disruptive events. EST provides a comprehensive framework to explore how events unfold and impact firms across various dimensions, moving beyond traditional place-centric views that focus primarily on geographic proximity. A key contribution of this perspective paper is the development of the event space perspective, a novel extension of EST that captures the relational, symbolic, and sociopolitical channels through which disruptive events influence organizations. This new perspective encourages a more dynamic and nuanced understanding of how events shape firm strategy and performance. Finally, we draw on both EST and the event space perspective to offer promising research directions on disruptive events for strategy and international business, laying a foundation for future studies to explore organizational resilience, strategic adaptation, and the management of uncertainty in an increasingly volatile global environment.