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<p>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.</p>

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

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年6月21日

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

摘要

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.