Time plays an integral role in understanding International Business (IB) phenomena, and so does qualitative inquiry. Despite this, time has received little attention in qualitative IB research. To rectify this, we engage in a qualitative content analysis of qualitative articles published from 1999 until 2020 in the Journal of World Business, Journal of International Business Studies, as well as the Academy of Management Journal, and Journal of Management Studies. Our findings suggest four temporal theorizing styles, namely temporal variation, temporal accumulation, temporal evolution, and temporal story. We add further granularity by distinguishing for each how time (i.e., snapshots, incremental, evolutionary, discursive), and context (detached context, descriptive context, contextual specificity, intertwined context), generate different theorizing outputs (variation, staged process, evolutionary process, (process) story). Our paper contributes by offering researchers a rich vocabulary and conceptual building blocks to engage with different temporal theorizing styles in qualitative IB research.

时间在理解国际商务 (IB) 现象中起着不可或缺的作用，定性探究也是如此。尽管如此，时间在定性 IB 研究中很少受到关注。为了纠正这一点，我们对 1999 年至 2020 年发表在《世界商业杂志》、《国际商业研究杂志》以及《管理学院杂志》和《管理研究杂志》上的定性文章进行了定性内容分析。我们的研究结果提出了四种时间理论化风格，即时间变化、时间积累、时间演化和时间故事。我们通过区分每个时间（即，快照、增量、进化、论述）和语境（分离语境、描述性语境、语境特异性、交织语境）产生不同的理论输出（变异、分阶段过程、进化过程、（过程）故事）。我们的论文通过为研究人员提供丰富的词汇和概念构建块来参与定性 IB 研究中的不同时间理论化风格。