In our Decade Award-winning article from 2011 we argued that it is not possible to explain social phenomena without consideration of their contexts. However, a persistent assumption in international business (IB) is that theories should be context-free. This affects the methodological choices we make, favoring the inductive theory-building approach to theorizing from case studies. In 2011, we proposed an alternative – contextualized explanations – that in our view better utilizes the main strength of the case study: reconciling theory and context. In this Retrospective, we further develop our original argument that context is essential, and not a hindrance, to theorizing, as well as elaborate on how decontextualization impoverishes theoretical insights. In order to achieve contextualized explanation, we offer four alternatives: process research, historical research, the extended case method, and configurational theorizing. We argue that, for the IB field to take contextualization seriously, we need an open debate about what theory is and how we produce it. We hope this paper will broaden the scope of our discussion from the need for methodological pluralism to the need for theoretical pluralism, thereby setting a new agenda for future IB research.

在我们 2011 年的十年获奖文章中，我们认为如果不考虑社会现象的背景，就不可能解释它们。然而，国际商务 (IB) 中的一个长期假设是，理论应该与上下文无关。这会影响我们做出的方法选择，有利于通过案例研究进行理论化的归纳理论构建方法。2011 年，我们提出了另一种选择——情境化解释——在我们看来，它更好地利用了案例研究的主要优势：协调理论和背景。在本次回顾中，我们进一步发展了我们最初的论点，即语境对于理论化是必不可少的，而不是障碍，并详细说明了去语境化如何使理论见解变得贫乏。为了实现语境化的解释，我们提供了四种选择：过程研究，历史研究、扩展案例方法和构型理论。我们认为，为了让 IB 领域认真对待语境化，我们需要就理论是什么以及我们如何产生它进行公开辩论。我们希望这篇论文能够将我们的讨论范围从对方法论多元化的需要扩大到对理论多元化的需要，从而为未来的 IB 研究设定新的议程。