The Forgotten Role of Time in Qualitative Theorizing for International Business Research

Item does not contain fulltextTime plays an integral role for developing a holistic understanding of International Business (IB) phenomena. Yet, how do IB scholars incorporate time in their qualitative theorizing is still not well understood. We interrogate this by applying qualitative content analysis on 89 papers published in Journal of World Business, Journal of International Business, Academy of Management Journal and Journal of Management Studies from 1999 until 2020. We conceptualize four distinct modes of temporal theorizing, namely temporal variance, temporal accumulation, temporal evolution and temporal story, which we view it as a continuum. In this regard, we conceptualize and propose pluralistic styles of temporal theorizing, which we contend will enable IB researchers to generate more ‘complete theories’