Putting qualitative international business research in context(s)

The Welch et al. (J Int Bus Stud 42(5):740–762, 2011) JIBS Decade Award-winning article highlights the importance of the contextualization of international business research that is based on qualitative research methods. In this commentary, we build on their foundation and develop further the role of contextualization, in terms of the international business phenomena under study, contemporaneous conversations about qualitative research methods, and the situatedness of individual papers within the broader research process. Our remarks are largely targeted to authors submitting international business papers based on qualitative research, and to the gatekeepers – editors and reviewers – assessing them, and we provide some guidance with respect to these three dimensions of context.

International business studies: Are we really so uniquely complex?

Articles in Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS) and elsewhere have argued that international business (IB) is a uniquely complex field. We offer an alternative perspective and evidence that IB is not so uniquely complex compared to organizational behavior, strategic management studies, and entrepreneurship. We argue that viewing IB as uniquely complex is likely a result of what a vast body of social psychology research has uncovered and labeled false uniqueness bias: the tendency for people to believe that they are unique compared to others. We discuss selective accessibility and focalism as underlying psychological mechanisms of this bias. We acknowledge advantages of claiming uniqueness, but argue that it is now more beneficial and realistic to highlight similarities. Doing so will allow IB to import and export theories and methods and thereby make IB borders even more permeable. In turn, increased permeability is likely to lead to further theoretical progress that will benefit IB research, practice, and its positive impact on organizations and society even further. To illustrate advantages of not exaggerating IB’s uniqueness, we use JIBS Decade Award winners as exemplars of studies that are admired and impactful precisely because of their focus on similarities rather than unique complexity.