Reclaiming history in IB research: expanding interdisciplinary inquiry through historical contextualization

IF 10.2 1区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS

Journal of International Business Studies Pub Date : 2026-06-21 DOI:10.1057/s41267-026-00873-8

Stephanie Decker, Geoffrey Jones, Klaus E. Meyer, Rebecca Piekkari, Catherine Welch

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

History is not merely prologue to International Business (IB) research—it is a constitutive element of how we understand multinational enterprises, foreign market entry, institutional change, and cross-border value creation. Despite increased recognition of interdisciplinary collaboration, IB scholars remain unclear about how to rigorously integrate historical methods and insights from Business History. In this special issue introduction, we address the impediments to closer interdisciplinary collaboration between the two disciplines. We identify three critical points of clarification: temporal distance, archival sources, and historical contextualization. We propose integrative research designs that embed historical analysis directly into IB theorizing. Such research designs enable IB scholars to address causal questions, explore legacy effects, and develop time and context-sensitive theories. Historically-contextualized IB research can explain why standardized theories fail in specific contexts, reveal path-dependent sequences that quantitative snapshots miss, and develop theories that account for deep institutional and temporal variation. We establish evaluation criteria for rigorous historical research and create bridges between IB and Business History scholarship. By clarifying concepts, providing research designs, and modeling best practices, this special issue expands IB’s explanatory capacity for the time-embedded, context-sensitive phenomena that define international business.

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在IB研究中重新认识历史：通过历史语境化扩展跨学科探究

历史不仅仅是国际商务（IB）研究的序幕——它是我们如何理解跨国企业、外国市场进入、制度变革和跨境价值创造的基本要素。尽管越来越多的人认识到跨学科合作，IB学者仍然不清楚如何严格整合历史方法和商业史的见解。在这期特刊的介绍中，我们讨论了两个学科之间更紧密的跨学科合作的障碍。我们确定了三个关键的澄清点：时间距离、档案来源和历史语境。我们提出将历史分析直接嵌入IB理论的综合研究设计。这样的研究设计使IB学者能够解决因果问题，探索遗留影响，并发展时间和上下文敏感的理论。历史背景化IB研究可以解释标准化理论在特定背景下失败的原因，揭示定量快照遗漏的路径依赖序列，并发展解释深层制度和时间变化的理论。我们为严格的历史研究建立了评估标准，并在IB和商业历史奖学金之间建立了桥梁。通过澄清概念、提供研究设计和建模最佳实践，本期特刊扩展了IB对定义国际商业的时间嵌入式、上下文敏感现象的解释能力。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of International Business Studies Multiple-

CiteScore

16.20

自引率

10.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Selection Committee for the JIBS Decade Award is pleased to announce that the 2023 award will be presented to Anthony Goerzen, Christian Geisler Asmussen, and Bo Bernhard Nielsen for their article titled "Global cities and multinational enterprise location strategy," published in JIBS in 2013 (volume 44, issue 5, pages 427-450). The prestigious JIBS Decade Award, sponsored by Palgrave Macmillan, recognizes the most influential paper published in the Journal of International Business Studies from a decade earlier. The award will be presented at the annual AIB conference. To be eligible for the JIBS Decade Award, an article must be one of the top five most cited papers published in JIBS for the respective year. The Selection Committee for this year included Kaz Asakawa, Jeremy Clegg, Catherine Welch, and Rosalie L. Tung, serving as the Committee Chair and JIBS Editor-in-Chief, all from distinguished universities around the world.