Temporality and firm de-internationalization: Three historical approaches

Abstract

This paper contributes to process-oriented international business research by showing how three distinct historical approaches can enrich theoretical understanding concerning temporality in firm de-internationalization. First, we show how comparative historical analysis unleashes the causal structure of the process and provides explanatory understanding of the temporal grounding of the mechanisms driving the process. Second, we explicate how interpretive history reveals the embeddedness of de-internationalization in the prevailing spirit of the time. Finally, we consider how poststructuralist history enables us to focus on the strong subjectivity of individuals in which multiple temporalities come together in a chaotic combination underlying behavior.