When Does Historical Context Matter?

A rather BIG question! With Andrew Godley and Marissa Joseph, I recently tackled this question with a deep (really deep) dive into the history of UK pharmaceuticals. We explore why some subsidiaries of multinational firms developed creative organizational responses to institutional disruptions, in the process challenging some of the core concepts of international business studies that have developed over the past four decades. Published as an open-access article in the Journal of International Business Studies, "When Does Historical Context Matter? Explaining the emergence of competence-creating subsidiaries" is a work that not only explains one important historical transformation in the international business environment, but also begins to explain more broadly why historical research is essential in the theory-driven world of business studies.