Abstract
Longitudinal qualitative research combining grounded theorizing and insights from modern historical methods can generate novel conceptual frameworks that establish theoretical bridges between historical narratives and reductionist quantitative models. To capitalize fully on this potential theory-bridging role, qualitative scholars should seek to study social systems characterized by complexity and nonlinear causation. Effectively serving this theory-bridging role provides a basis for securing a distinctive place for qualitative research in the social sciences in general, and for international business research in particular.
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Notes
- 1.
Glaser and Strauss’s original treatise (1967) remains the best source for researchers to familiarize themselves with the methodology of grounded theory development. Later elaborations (e.g., Corbin and Strauss 2008; Glaser 1992; Strauss 1987) provide additional details and procedures, but also show the emergence of a split between Glaserian and Straussian interpretations of the methodology. Glaser accuses Strauss of introducing a degree of “conceptual forcing” on data in lieu of the “emergence of concepts” from data, and restricting grounded theorizing too much to qualitative data at the expense of what can be contributed by quantitative data. Close reading of both authors’ later works suggests that the substance of the split is somewhat overblown. The more authentic interpretation, nevertheless, in my view is that of Glaser (1992).
- 2.
“Time,” “longitudinal,” “history” are not indexed in Glaser and Strauss (1967). Strauss (1987) indexes “trajectory” as a time-dependent notion, but does not explicitly discuss the longitudinal aspect of qualitative analysis. Similarly, Corbin and Strauss (2008) do not explicitly discuss the longitudinal aspects of qualitative research.
- 3.
Burrow (2007: xiii, italics in original) points out that “A histor in Homer was someone who passed judgment based on the facts as a result of investigation, so the link between history and inquest is a very old one.”
- 4.
One of the reviewers suggested “holistic” as perhaps a better term than “ecological.” While both terms can be used effectively to indicate a system with emergent properties, I use “ecological” because it refers explicitly to the relationship between systems and their environments.
- 5.
For a thorough discussion of the uses of counterfactual analysis – both counterfactual history and causal modeling – in strategic management, see Durand and Vaara (2009).
- 6.
A potentially interesting implication of this is that counterfactual analysis plays not only an important upstream role of theory generation in what Reichenbach (1951) calls the “context of discovery,” but also a downstream role of theory falsification in the “context of justification” by offering tests of consistency and coherence. I thank one of the reviewers for suggesting this connection to scientific philosophy.
- 7.
Another interesting counterfactual, which I did not pursue, would be to think about what the company could have done if these new opportunities had not been available.
- 8.
For instance, the strategic integration framework (Burgelman and Doz 2001) raises the possibility that bottom-up driven cross-business collaboration was more likely to be successful than top-down driven cross-business collaboration in multibusiness firms (Martin and Eisenhardt 2010), because the latter might have been of the “overambitious” type of strategic integration. Informed by this possibility, potentially interesting further research might try to establish whether, in general, top-down driven cross-boundary collaborations are more likely to be overambitious than bottom-up driven cross-boundary collaboration (a potential alternative explanation) and/or under what conditions this might be the case.
- 9.
A recent example is the major revision of the strategy-making of Czar Alexander and the Russian top military command during Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign, based on newly available archival data from Russia. See Lieven (2009).
- 10.
It would perhaps have been preferable for Corley and Gioia (2011) to develop their framework further by considering scientific utility and practical utility as two different dimensions (they too quickly pass on doing this, in my view).
- 11.
For instance, Chandler, in an interview in 2002 related to the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the publication of Strategy and Structure, mentioned my book Strategy is Destiny as an example of research that continued the tradition that he had started. See Rodrigues (2002).
- 12.
The model of induced and autonomous strategic behavior, for instance, seems to have served as one of the stepping stones for some scholars’ development of a mathematical model in the economics of the firm (Rotemberg and Saloner 2000).
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Thanks to Special Issue co-editor Mary Yoko Brannen and three anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions to clarify the paper’s main arguments, and to improve its readability.
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Burgelman, R.A. (2020). Bridging History and Reductionism: A Key Role for Longitudinal Qualitative Research. In: Eden, L., Nielsen, B.B., Verbeke, A. (eds) Research Methods in International Business. JIBS Special Collections. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22113-3_12
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