TY  - CHAP
AB  - Purpose – This chapter is intended to encourage comparative-historical research in strategy by articulating a framework for the study of industry and firm evolution.Design/methodology/approach – Strategy research at its core tries to explain sustained performance differences among firms. This chapter argues that one, out of the many ways to create a productive marriage between strategy research and historical scholarship, is to carry out historically informed comparative studies of how firms and industries gain and lose their competitive position. While much of current strategy research adopts a large N hypothesis testing mode with the implicit assumption that one discovers generalization just like a Newtonian law such as F=m×a that applies across all space and time, an historically grounded methodology starts from the opposite direction. It assumes that a process or event may be idiosyncratic and therefore seeks to establish with detailed evidence that a 2nd (and later 3rd, 4th, … nth) process or event is indeed similar before generalizing across observations.Findings/originality/value – The chapter argues that the field of strategy would benefit from allocating more effort on building causal generalizations inductively from well-researched case studies, seeking to establish the boundary conditions of emerging generalizations. It articulates a comparative research program that outlines such an approach for the arena of industry and firm evolution studies.
VL  - 29
SN  - 978-1-78190-024-6, 978-1-78190-025-3/0742-3322
DO  - 10.1108/S0742-3322(2012)0000029008
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/S0742-3322(2012)0000029008
AU  - Murmann Johann Peter
ED  - Steven J. Kahl
ED  - Brian S. Silverman
ED  - Michael A. Cusumano
PY  - 2012
Y1  - 2012/01/01
TI  - Marrying History and Social Science in Strategy Research
T2  - History and Strategy
T3  - Advances in Strategic Management
PB  - Emerald Group Publishing Limited
SP  - 89
EP  - 115
Y2  - 2024/04/25
ER  -