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In this concluding chapter, we look ahead to future theoretical and methodological directions that emerge from the contributions in this volume and that carry the potential to enrich contemporary organizational research. We furthermore point to some issues that remain unsolved and need to be addressed in future research to further establish the configurational approach in the field of organizational studies, such as the growing need for homogeneity in how the analysis is conducted and results are presented. We argue that the momentum of the configurational approach in organizational research is strong, but that important challenges remain.

Extant work in international business (IB) involves a partial contingency-theoretic perspective: a holistic view of the impact of bundles of contingencies on an outcome variable is missing. The purpose of this paper is to adopt a contingency approach to study multinational enterprise (MNE) subsidiary performance in the appropriate context of European transition economies at the beginning of the current millennium.

Methodologically, the authors introduce abduction as a line of inquiry into IB and management to develop new theoretical insights, and apply the novel empirical general interaction method to estimate bundle effects. In so doing, the authors contribute to the further development of a theoretical and empirical toolkit to revitalize holistic, or configurational, quantitative research in IB and management.

The authors find that capability fit is a necessary condition for high MNE subsidiary marketing performance, whilst environment fit is particularly critical for high MNE subsidiary financial performance.

A key limitation is that this is a cross-section study.

This study offers insights as to subsidiary fit into Eastern Europe, indicating fitting entry and establishment modes.

This paper offers a novel holistic approach to IB, both in terms of theoretical and empirical methodology.

Unlike previous studies that examine the role of different entrepreneurial ecosystem factors in predicting entrepreneurial intentions. The purpose of this study is to explain the direct effects of entrepreneurial ecosystem factors effecting entrepreneurial intentions and configurational combinations of entrepreneurial ecosystem factors that cause high or low entrepreneurial intentions among female university students in Saudi Arabia.

The study used structured survey-questionnaire based data collected from 310 female students enrolled in different universities in Saudi Arabia. The study used symmetric analysis using structural equation modeling technique, whereas asymmetric analysis is performed using the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, necessary condition analysis is also used to identify the role of different entrepreneurial ecosystem factors in increasing and/or decreasing entrepreneurial intentions among young Saudi women.

The results of symmetrical analysis show that access to finance, access to physical infrastructure, and cultural factors are not significantly associated with entrepreneurial intentions, whereas government policies and regulations, government programs and support, social factors and entrepreneurship education and training are significantly associated with the development of entrepreneurial intentions among female Saudi university students. While the result of asymmetrical analysis provides 15 configurational models that explains the high levels of certain factors to predict entrepreneurial intentions among female university students in Saudi Arabia. Specifically, social support is found as necessary condition in majority of models to predict high levels of entrepreneurial intentions among female Saudi university students.

The results of the study provide empirical evidence to policymakers in Saudi Arabia. The study proposes that it is not mandatory that the high levels of all entrepreneurial ecosystem factors are important to predict high entrepreneurial intentions, rather in some conditions the low levels of certain factors are obligatory to predict high levels of entrepreneurial intentions.

Two-step mix-method approach is used in this study containing analysis of symmetric within entrepreneurial ecosystem increase or decrease entrepreneurial intentions among female university students in Saudi Arabia. There has been plenty of research that examines the role of entrepreneurial ecosystem factors in development of university students’ entrepreneurial intentions, however there is less research evident in the entrepreneurship literature that examine the configurational effects of factors within entrepreneurial ecosystem in increasing and/or decreasing entrepreneurial intentions among female university students.

Trust is the glue that holds cooperative relationships together and often exists in an asymmetric manner. The purpose of this study is to explore how to mitigate the issue of losses or increased transaction costs caused by opportunistic behavior in a soft environment where trust asymmetry is quite common and difficult to avoid.

This study focuses on examining asymmetric trust between the government and the private sector in public-private partnership (PPP) projects. Drawing upon both project realities and relevant literature, the primary conditional variables influencing asymmetric trust are identified. These variables encompass power perception asymmetry, information asymmetry, interaction behavior, risk perception differences and government-side control. Subsequently, through the use of a survey questionnaire, binary-matched data from both the government and the private sector are collected. The study employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to conduct a configurational analysis, aiming to investigate the causal pathways that trigger asymmetric trust.

No single conditional variable is a necessary condition for the emergence of trust asymmetry. The pathways leading to a high degree of trust asymmetry can be categorized into two types: those dominated by power perception and those involving a combination of multiple factors. Differences in power perception play a crucial role in the occurrence of high trust asymmetry, yet the influence of other conditional variables in triggering trust asymmetry should not be overlooked.

The findings can contribute to advancing the study of trust relationships in the field of Chinese PPP projects. Furthermore, they hold practical value in facilitating the enhancement of trust relationships between the government and the private sector.

This paper aims to investigate the innovation pathway of gerontechnological enterprises under the market-organization-technology (MOT) perspective through configuration analysis.

Based on the analytical framework of technology, organization and market, this paper conducts configuration analysis on the cases of 55 elderly-friendly enterprises in China combined with fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

First, this study identifies the three first-level preconditions affecting innovation performance: organization's architectural innovation, technology adapting to aging and market environment attention on the innovation pathway of gerontechnological enterprises. These three first-level conditions include six sub-conditions. Second, this study investigates three innovation pathways by analyzing the configuration effects of preconditions: Configuration 1, technology-balanced type; Configuration 2, organization-market linkage type and Configuration, 3 balanced type. Third, there are differences in the distribution of different configuration types in subdivided industries. The technology-balanced configuration is mainly concentrated in design-driven innovative enterprises, the organization-market linkage configuration is mainly concentrated in medical auxiliary equipment enterprises and the balanced configuration is mainly concentrated in smart elderly care service platform enterprises empowered by digital technology. Fourth, there are differences in the innovation impact paths of the same configuration type. However, the essence lies in the high-level innovation performance formed by the coordinated evolution of technology, organization and market factors, reflecting the characteristics of the same goal through different routes.

The authors' study generates new insights for innovation managers of gerontechnological enterprises about the innovation pathway.

This research enriches innovation management by integrating the linkage adaptation relationship among market, organization and technology factors; further research studies on the different configuration types suitable for different types of enterprises, as well as differentiated innovation pathways under the same configuration type, could contribute to the study on the innovation pathway under a premise of MOT.

This study aims to obtain governance strategies for managing the complexity of megaprojects by analyzing the impact of individual factors and their configurations using the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method and to provide references for project managers.

With the continuous development of the economy, society and construction industry, the number and scale of megaprojects are increasing, and the complexity is becoming serious. Based on the relevant literature, the factors affecting the complexity of megaprojects are determined through case analysis, and the paths of factors affecting the complexity are constructed for megaprojects. Then, the fsQCA method is used to analyze the factors affecting the complexity of megaprojects through 245 valid questionnaires from project engineers in this study.

The results support the correlation between the complexity factors of megaprojects, with six histological paths leading to high complexity and seven histological paths leading to low complexity.

It breaks the limitations of the traditional project complexity field through a “configuration perspective” and concludes that megaproject complexity is a synergistic effect of multiple factors. The study is important for enriching the theory of megaproject complexity and providing complexity governance strategies for managers in megaproject decision-making.

This paper aims to investigate how value drivers of internet medical business model affect value creation through a configurational approach. The internet medical business model (IMBM) is such a business model that integrates online and offline medical services with the driving force of internet technologies covering prediagnosis, in-diagnosis and postdiagnosis. The outbreak of COVID-19 and the support of national policies have boosted the development of internet health care. However, there are still many challenges in practice, such as the unclear innovation path, as well as difficulties in landing and profiting. Academic research has not yet provided sufficient theoretical insights. Therefore, to better explain and guide practice, it is urgent to clarify the innovation path and mechanism of value creation for IMBM.

Based on the sample of 58 internet medical firms in China, this paper adopts fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explore the configurational effects of IMBM’s value drivers on value creation.

Building on the business model canvas and the characteristics of internet health care, five value drivers of IMBM are identified, namely, functional value proposition, emotional value proposition, user involvement, resource capabilities and connection properties. And the five value drivers form three configurations, which are, respectively, labeled as resource-driven configuration, user-operated configuration and product-combined configuration. From the perspective of the integration of traditional and emerging theories, such as resource-based view, internet economics and value cocreation, each configuration leads to value creation and improves value results with different mechanisms behind it.

First, combined with the business model canvas and the characteristics of internet health care, this paper identifies five value drivers of IMBM, thus improving the relevant research on internet health care. Second, based on the configurational effects, this paper discusses the mechanism behind the configurational effects of IMBM’s value drivers on value creation, thus expanding relevant research on the value creation of business models. Third, applying fsQCA and combining the advantages of qualitative research and quantitative research, this paper adds to the configurations of IMBM’s value drivers that achieve high-value results.

The notion of configuration – that the whole is best understood from a systemic perspective and should be viewed as a constellation of interconnected elements – is arguably one of the central ideas of organization studies. Yet, this idea also remains one of the field’s least understood aspects. In this volume and its introduction, we outline a new perspective for understanding configuration. Our starting point is the emergence of set theoretic configurational methods, and especially Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), which provides novel ways for analyzing configurations. Our volume goes beyond introducing a new method to the fields of management and organization, as these methods furthermore offer an opportunity to rethink our understanding of the field and to develop different ways of theorizing the rich complexity of relationships that characterize organizational life. In this introduction, we introduce some of the key themes that differentiate the approach taken here from previous work on organizational configurations and provide evidence for the emerging renaissance of the configurational approach in organizational theory and research.

This work aims to develop a configurational model to explain how relational trust and combinative capability can jointly improve the relationship between innovativeness and firm's performance.

The empirical study was developed on a sample of 224 companies in the footwear industry in Spain. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses in order to confirm the proposed configurational model.

The partial results demonstrate the significant effect of relational trust on the innovativeness-performance relationship but, unexpectedly, reveals the non-significant effect of combinative capability on this relationship. The triple interaction effects model provides new insights into the positive effect of combinative capability on the innovativeness-performance relationship once firms gain relational trust from their contacts.

The cross-sectional nature of the study imposes a limitation on the results. Nevertheless, due to the detailed information required to achieve the aims of the research, a longitudinal study could be excessively complex. In any event, the cross-sectional approach of the study accomplishes the proposed aim.

Managers should involve the employees of the firm in order to improve the effectiveness of continuous innovation, encouraging them to establish trusting relationships with external agents and contributing to combine the relevant external knowledge with the individual and collective knowledge available in the firm.

This work contributes to the existing literature with a more complete picture of the influence of innovativeness on firms' performance, highlighting that performance is affected by the coherence of the configuration of innovativeness, relational trust and combination capability.

This chapter explores the integrative effects of individual psychology and social context in explaining why managers would behave in socially responsible ways. To identify how factors at different levels of analysis combine to shape attitudes toward social responsibility, I apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to survey and archival data from 335 managers of overseas subsidiaries of three Dutch corporations. Attention to the simultaneous effects of individual psychological factors, the organizational context, and the broader social context offers a configurational perspective on the micro and macrofoundations of social responsibility.