The Challenge of the Multinational Corporation to Organization Theory: Contextualizing Theory

Organization scholars have increasingly looked to the multinational corporation (MNC) as a convenient research site for testing and developing general hypotheses applicable to any organization. In this essay, we argue that theorizing about organizational processes in the MNC needs to treat the MNC itself as a research object: that is, to recognize that the complex multidimensionality of the MNC will influence the phenomena under investigation and needs to be incorporated into research design and conceptual framing. To do so requires what we term contextualized explanations: styles of theorizing that view context as constitutive of organizational phenomena. We reanalyse an existing study of identity work in the Carlsberg Group to demonstrate the theoretical insights to be gained from a contextualized approach. Our case analysis illustrates how integrating the MNC into the explanation changes our theoretical understanding of the phenomena being investigated.