Irregular and Interrupted Internationalization Pathways: An Event System Approach to Understand the Role of Critical Events

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.