Temporality and the first foreign direct investment
研究了首次对外直接投资的时间选择，通过引入多种时间概念（时钟、事件、阶段、循环）分析国际化决策过程，以哈佛商学院1971年的案例说明时间理解如何影响对复杂决策的洞察。
This study examines the timing of the first foreign direct investment (FDI). It explores how the conceptualization and, hence, the understanding of time affects our insights into major internationalization decisions in organizations; specifically, that of navigating into the unknown waters associated with making a first FDI. We introduce a multitemporal approach by drawing on the different temporalities prevalent in history and in business and management to build a platform for analysis that provides a suitable combination of richness and contrast. By examining the process toward making a major internationalization decision in terms of clock, event, stages, and cyclical concepts of time, we gain valuable but also varied insights about a complex process. We conclude that to understand any organization's process of international strategy formation at a certain point (or period) in time, its particularities need to be appreciated in some detail. While the details in this study are unique to the case of Harvard Business School's decision in 1971 to make its first FDI, we argue that the main features of the process are common to conceptualizing the internationalization decision process. As such, the findings should apply more generally.