Irregular and Interrupted Internationalization Pathways: An Event System Approach to Understand the Role of Critical Events
研究巴西出口企业在持续冲击下如何因关键事件导致感知脆弱性上升，进而混合预测与非预测策略，引发不规则和中断的国际化路径，对理解企业国际化动态有参考价值。
Firms’ internationalization journeys often exhibit irregularities and interruptions—temporary or permanent foreign market exits, re-entries, and/or new entries. Yet, the role of critical events or discontinuous ‘happenings’ that affect internationalization pathways is not well understood in international business research. Drawing from qualitative analysis of Brazilian exporters experiencing continuous disruptions or shocks, we develop an integrated model using event system approach (ESA). We provide novelty by theorizing how continuous disruption caused by critical events at multiple (environmental, firm, individual) levels leads to an increase in perceived vulnerability and shifts managerial decision-making to mixing predictive and non-predictive strategies. The latter strategy is rational for resilience-building, yet causes irregular (de- and re-internationalization) and interrupted (switching) international pathways. Our unique contribution is an integrated causal model demonstrating how events characterized by strength, time, and space drive managers’ strategic response to reduce vulnerability by temporarily or permanently ‘switching’ foreign market engagement.