Complementing Nielsen and colleagues’ (2020) analysis of methodological trends in the Journal of International Business Studies over the past 50 years, we examine similar data on methods published in a wider range of leading international business (IB) journals. Our analysis shows a clear decline of studies based on primary data relative to secondary data, and a persistently low level of individual-level studies among the growing body of research using secondary data across all IB journals considered. We discuss the main mechanisms driving these trends and identify the problems of IB’s increasing exposure to the risks inherent in secondary data. We also discuss the implications related to neglecting individual-level data for theory advancement in IB, such as a disregard for novel secondary data opportunities at the individual level and the risk of reduced theoretical pluralism. In doing so, we substantially extend the debate initiated by Nielsen and colleagues (2020).

补充 Nielsen 及其同事 (2020) 对《国际商业研究杂志》中方法论趋势的分析在过去的 50 年里，我们检查了在更广泛的领先国际商业 (IB) 期刊上发表的方法的类似数据。我们的分析显示，相对于二手数据，基于原始数据的研究明显减少，并且在越来越多的使用二手数据的研究中，个人层面的研究水平一直很低。我们讨论了推动这些趋势的主要机制，并确定了 IB 日益暴露于二手数据固有风险的问题。我们还讨论了与忽略个人层面数据对 IB 理论进步的影响，例如忽视个人层面新的二手数据机会和减少理论多元化的风险。这样做，我们大大扩展了 Nielsen 及其同事（2020 年）发起的辩论。