The Nature of Failure: The Protracted Demise of the American-Colombian Corporation, 1909–1960
研究一家美国公司在哥伦比亚拥有最大地产却最终失败的原因，强调错误认知和外部环境而非管理经验不足，对理解跨国投资失败有启发。
For 50 years, the American-Colombian Corporation owned the largest property in Colombia: the Lands of Loba. While the principal investors, men from Utah and later also Laurance and Nelson Rockefeller, dreamed of making a fortune from this tropical “fairyland,” none of their plans bore fruit and they eventually lost control to thousands of so-called squatters. To explain the failure of an American free-standing company, this article emphasizes misguided perceptions and a challenging external environment rather than managerial inexperience. Examining recycled notions of tropical abundance demonstrates how ideas of nature can influence investment decisions. Overlapping property rights and tension between possession and title complicated company efforts to raise capital. Local resistance and a fractured political landscape further limited its influence. Ultimately, the very scale of the property both generated delusions of grandeur and frustrated the company’s territorial control.