This article responds to calls for IB researchers to study a greater diversity of international business (IB) phenomena in order to generate theoretical insights about empirical settings that are under-represented in the scholarly IB literature. While this objective is consistent with the strengths of qualitative research methods, novel empirical settings are not always well aligned with methods that have been developed in better-researched and thus more familiar settings. In this article, we explore three methods-related challenges of studying under-researched empirical settings, in terms of gathering and analyzing qualitative data. The challenges are: managing researcher identities, navigating unfamiliar data gathering conditions, and theorizing the uniqueness of novel empirical settings. These challenges are integral to the process of contextualization, which involves linking observations from an empirical setting to the categories of the theoretical research context. We provide a toolkit of recommended practices to manage them, by drawing on published accounts of research by others, and on our own experiences in the field.

本文回应了对 IB 研究人员研究更多样化的国际商业 (IB) 现象的呼吁，以产生关于在学术 IB 文献中代表性不足的经验设置的理论见解。虽然这一目标与定性研究方法的优势是一致的，但新的经验设置并不总是与在研究得更好、因此更熟悉的环境中开发的方法保持一致。在本文中，我们在收集和分析定性数据方面探讨了研究未充分研究的经验设置的三个与方法相关的挑战。挑战是：管理研究人员的身份，导航不熟悉的数据收集条件，以及对新颖经验设置的独特性进行理论化。这些挑战是情境化过程不可或缺的一部分，情境化过程涉及将来自经验环境的观察与理论研究背景的类别联系起来。我们通过借鉴他人已发表的研究报告以及我们自己在该领域的经验，提供了一套推荐实践的工具包来管理它们。