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Contextualizing Management Studies

The article discusses the limitations of relying on Western management theories in diverse global contexts, advocating for an open systems perspective that emphasizes the importance of contextualization in management research. It highlights the need for multidisciplinary approaches and the integration of local theories to enhance the relevance and applicability of management studies. The authors argue that adopting context-sensitive frameworks can lead to novel insights and better understanding of organizational practices across different cultural and economic environments.

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Contextualizing Management Studies

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Gijs Steinmann

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Journal of Management Studies 59:4 June 2022

doi:10.1111/joms.12754

Contextualizing Management Research: An Open

Systems Perspective

Igor Filatotcheva,b, R. Duane Irelandc and

Günter K. Stahlb
a
King’s College London; bVienna University of Economics and Business; cTexas A&M University

ABSTRACT Management researchers rely frequently on theoretical perspectives originating

in North American and European contexts. Given the influences context has on scholarship,
the question becomes if using primarily Western theories provides researchers with the design
insights needed to capture the robust context of the setting in which they conduct their studies.
Herein, we seek to establish a foundation for developing fertile exchanges of ideas regarding
contextualized management research. To do this, we examine some of the main theories in
management studies through the heuristic lens of an ‘open systems’ framework that allows us
to build on comparative management and institutional theories. We discuss existing theory ad-
vances in selected areas of management studies, including corporate governance, strategic man-
agement, entrepreneurship, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) to offer avenues for future
research. Completing studies with a solid grounding in contextualized management theories has
the potential to provide novel research avenues and opportunities to integrate diverse theoretical
perspectives. We also identify a need for multidisciplinary research, epistemological openness,
and methodological pluralism.
Keywords: management research, context, open system

INTRODUCTION
Central to management scholarship is the context in which the research occurs. We
view context as ‘…a dynamic array of factors, features, processes or events which have
an influence on a phenomenon that is examined’ (Michailova, 2011, p. 130). Context
covers a broad range of the dimensional structures that vary substantially in terms of
levels of analysis and domains being studied (Härtel and O’Connor, 2014) and links ob-
servations with facts (Rousseau and Fried, 2001). Contextualized theories ‘…specify how

Address for reprints: Igor Filatotchev, King’s Business School, King’s College London, Bush House, 30 Aldwych,
London WC2B 4BG, UK ([email protected]).

surrounding phenomena or temporal conditions directly influence lower-level phenom-

ena, condition relations between one or more variables at different levels of analysis or
are influenced by the phenomena nested within them’ (Bamberger, 2008, p. 41). Zahra
and Wright (2011) suggest that researchers should pay attention to the heterogeneous
aspects of context when using and/or developing theories and methodologies.[1]
Perhaps commonly, though, management scholars sacrifice understanding about phe-
nomena in specific contexts by focusing on the generalizability of their findings to a wide
variety of settings. This tendency is partly explained by the desire of scholars to broaden
the focus of their theories and make them more widely applicable (Bamberger, 2008).
Another reason is that management researchers rely frequently on theoretical perspec-
tives developed by scholars focused on North American and European research contexts;
indeed, these contexts underpin almost all management theory (Van de Ven and Jing,
2012). The theories developed in North America and/or Europe have a foundation in
business contexts when these regions dominated the world’s economies. When applied
to novel situations that differ from the contexts in which they originated, like the emerg-
ing economies of Asia, South America, and Africa, these theories may lack explanatory
power with regards to local phenomena (Tsui, 2007).
In general, scholars continue to rely on the theories that emanate from North America
and Europe even though firms at present operate in a far richer, complex, diverse, and
challenging set of global conditions. Today’s organizations and those leading them face
unprecedented levels of disruption and economic, social, and environmental problems
that are of huge proportions. The impact of the recent COVID-19 pandemic suggests
that ‘established assumptions, concepts and practices in management studies and its
many sub-fields will require revision and rethinking’ (Muzio and Doh, 2020, p. 1725).
Collectively, these conditions create grand challenges requiring coordinated and collab-
orative efforts to find solutions to issues such as poverty and hunger, climate change, and
rising inequality (Howard-Grenville, 2020).
To capture the increasing complexity, volatility, and uncertainty of the external envi-
ronment, and gain a better understanding of how firms can address these challenges and
deal with the environmental discontinuities associated with them, management schol-
ars need to recognize the boundary conditions for established theories and adopt more
context-dependent perspectives. We believe that contextualizing research, using locally
relevant theories as a foundation for doing so, has the potential to increase the proba-
bility of management scholarship yielding viable results that can inform future research
and organizational practices throughout the world. Specifically, we argue that context-
sensitive Western theories, such as agency theory, the resource-based view of the firm,
and stakeholder perspective, have the potential to generate important and even provoc-
ative insights when applied to non-Western /global contexts. To do so however, they
require proper contextualization. We suggest that management scholars should adopt an
open-systems perspective when studying organizations –especially outside Western con-
texts. An open-systems perspective draws attention to the broader context in which or-
ganizations are embedded. To gain a better understanding of local phenomena, scholars
can draw on institutional theory, comparative and cross-cultural management theories,
and other contextually sensitive theoretical frameworks.

We organize our paper as follows. First, we describe how scholars often use North
American and European theories as a primary driver of their research. We then reflect
on the research focus of some of the main theories in management studies with a specific
emphasis on the key outcomes of contextualization of management research. Although
there may be divergent views on what the ‘main theories’ are, we focus on the domains
that seem to be most relevant in terms of contextualizing management research. We
then discuss selected areas of management studies and results flowing from them. We
conclude with a discussion of avenues for future research.

Western-Centric Biases in Management Theories: A Misrepresentation of

Reality or a Foundation for Theoretical Advances?
As scholars, we should recognize that an outcome of the near exclusive reliance on North
American and/or European theoretical perspectives when conducting research is the
potential limitations this design decision poses for the set of research questions manage-
ment scholars around the world choose to ask (Van de Ven et al., 2018). Additionally,
this choice of theories affects the range of answers obtained when investigating research
questions. Nonetheless, in ways, theories from North American and Europe have stood
the test of time and remain attractive to scholars today.
As we discuss in this Point perspective, there is reason to believe that using context-
sensitive theories can be the foundation for insightful and sometime provocative research
results. This is particularly the case when scholars apply those theories with proper con-
textualization and when viewed through the heuristic lens of an ‘open systems’ frame-
work –that is, a framework arguing that an organization’s survival depends upon its
relationship with its environment (Scott, 2003; Thompson, 1967). An open systems per-
spective is inherently context-sensitive as it positions an organization as the throughput
part of a triad of activities in which the firm obtains resources from the external environ-
ment, processes them into outputs in the form of products and/or services, and returns
the outputs to the external environment.
In line with an open systems perspective to studying organizations, Filatotchev et al.,
2020b, p. 24), in a recent JMS article, suggest that ‘we need to be mindful that the differ-
ent institutional and cultural contexts within which organizations exist and from which
particular topics of research and domains of knowledge are generated cannot be com-
pared in any neutral or apolitical sense’. From this perspective, some nations have had
a dominant role in shaping and even prescribing how particular institutional and eco-
nomic arrangements and the associated management practices should look, but have
been able to exploit their dominant positions so as to derive economic benefit from them
(Smith and Meiksins, 1995). As an example, one can mention international business the-
ories that until recently focused predominantly on the core advantages of multinational
enterprises (MNEs) headquartered in developed economies when considering their ex-
pansion strategies in emerging and developed economies.
An overarching objective of this Point article is to respond to the increasing number of
critiques of management research that highlight its ‘under-contextualized’ nature and
hence its inability to present an accurate comparison and explanation of the diversity
of management and corporate governance arrangements across different economic,

political, and institutional contexts (Aguilera and Jackson, 2003). This paper seeks to help
establish a foundation to develop further this fertile exchange of ideas between different
theoretical strands in the management field. Scholars are making progress in research on
both the similarities and the differences in diverse research contexts. We also hope that
our discussion helps to lay the foundation for truly novel theory building that can inform
the design of future research.
Bearing these differences and contextual contrasts in mind, we seek to address a di-
verse set of issues in this paper, such as: How does an understanding of theories devel-
oped historically in North American and Europe change as we consider the diversity
of organizational, cultural, and geographic contexts? Further, an important research
question concerns the extent to which dominant management theories are transferable
from one context to another (Bamberger, 2008). Finally, with this Point essay, we provide
insights about how an open systems perspective can complement the development of
indigenous management theories that aim to overcome the over-reliance on Western the-
ories by adopting non-Western-centric theoretical lenses and epistemological traditions,
as discussed further in the Counter-Point essay.

Contextualizing Management Research: An Open Systems Perspective

The tenets of both comparative management and its most recent extension –the com-
parative management perspective theory and practice –essentially assume a general ap-
plicability of core (Western) theories, such as an agency framework, the resource-based
view (RBV), and transaction costs economics (TCE). Additionally, though, scholars
suggest that operationalizing these theories when designing research studies should be
contingent on a set of economic, social, and cultural characteristics in a particular con-
text. Scholars should acknowledge the theoretical contributions associated with studies
grounded in these theories. The ‘institutional distance’ framework (e.g., Kostova and
Roth, 2002) and ‘embedded agency’ (e.g., Bellavitis et al., 2020) theory are examples of
such contributions. These theories offer some powerful practical perspectives, especially
in the context of MNC management.
Recent research with a grounding in institutional theory and organizational sociol-
ogy goes a step farther in advocating for an ‘open-systems’ perspective on management
theory (e.g., Freeman, 1984; Scott, 2003; Thompson, 1967). This perspective suggests
that different management and corporate governance practices may be more or less
effective and appropriate depending on the context of different organizational environ-
ments (Aguilera et al., 2008; Filatotchev et al., 2020a). This research comes closer to an
open-systems approach that Thompson (1967) pioneered by recognizing that organiza-
tional practices depend on a wider set of firm-related actors and institutional settings.
This shifts attention from efficiency arguments (e.g., narrow definitions of performance)
toward a broader understanding of effectiveness in terms of goal attainment in relation
to the multiple objectives of different constituent stakeholders (i.e., employee satisfaction,
supplier reciprocity, consumer loyalty, etc.).
Drawing from this epistemological approach, we argue that adopting an open-systems
logic when studying organizations will result in greater attention to the broader environ-
mental context while not neglecting decision-making actors and their agency (Filatotchev

et al., 2020a). Surprisingly, very little research builds on the large and robust body of
organizational sociology that examines the alignment between organizations and their
broader environment explicitly, and the firm’s co-evolution toward a sustainable, ‘win-
win’ relationship with multiple stakeholders. In the following sections, we aim to close this
theoretical gap specifically in the context of various key areas in management research
in response to a diverse range of internal and external antecedent factors linking an or-
ganization with its environment. Table I provides an explicit and systematic comparison
between the open systems perspective and various traditional management theories. The
table’s design demonstrates how the open systems approach helps to contextualize dom-
inant research streams. In the following sections, we expand on each of these domains
and outline both the current state-of-the-art and remaining problems regarding contex-
tualization of theories and their key assumptions.

Comparative Corporate Governance: Thinking outside the Confines of

Agency Theory
We start with the agency perspective with its focus on principal-agent problems and costs
of managerial opportunism in terms of shareholder value destruction as it has had a
strong influence on management and corporate governance research for many decades.
The main emphasis of this research in the context of firms in developed Western econ-
omies with large and liquid stock markets is on how to protect the interests of owners,
especially minority investors, from professional managers’ self-serving opportunistic be-
haviour. Having its theoretical roots in economics and finance, agency-grounded research
underpins the notion of ‘shareholder supremacy’ which, in turn, shapes fundamental
approaches to the roles and objectives of firm-level governance and promotes ideas of
shareholder value maximization, productivity and financial efficiency as if these were
self-evidently desirable and in the interests of all (Bourdieu, 2000). As Table I indicates,
the predominant focus on ‘shareholder supremacy’ perspective in corporate governance
research also suggests that solutions to governance problems such as board effectiveness,
market for corporate control, equity-based managerial compensation, etc., can be ap-
plied across different contexts universally.
In contrast, the open systems perspective suggests that contextual factors define the
nature of governance problems as well as their solutions. For example, the specific features
of corporate sectors in many developed and developing economies add new, relatively
less explored, dimensions to agency-grounded research. For example, founding families
often hold significant equity stakes in the firm. A result of these ownership positions is
the potential for these individuals and clans to abuse minority investors, including foreign
institutions. Although family businesses feature in the developed economies as well, the
complexity and overall opacity of family control in countries such as India, South Korea,
and Singapore, combined often with less developed formal regulatory institutions, under-
pin a relatively new corporate governance framework that some researchers have coined
a ‘principal-principal conflict’ (Zhang et al., 2015). By focusing on regulatory, social and
economic environments within firms operate, the open system perspective suggests that
governance researchers should take into account a wide diversity in patterns of ownership
and control and move away from an over-emphasis on the US/UK corporate context.

Traditional frameworks Open systems perspective

Corporate The agency framework with its focus on Contextual factors define the nature of
Governance principal-agent conflicts is a key focus of governance problems as well as their
governance research solutions
Theoretical approaches to corporate Contextual differences underpin
governance effectiveness are based on pattern variations in firm-level
the notion of ‘Shareholder supremacy’ governance models, including
principal-principal conflicts,
founder/family control, network
governance, and the the governance
role of the state
Solutions to governance problems such A formal consideration of
as managerial compensation, board stakeholders’ interests within the
effectiveness, market for corporate context of firm-level governance
control, etc. are assumed to be
universally applied across different
contexts
Strategy A focus on understanding strategy Concentration on decisions and
formulation, implementation, actions required to understand
evaluation, and control these processes within the context
of economic, social, political and
economic realities
Determining strategic positioning on Making strategic positioning choices
the basis of a relatively stable set of within the context of changing
competitors stakeholders’ expectations and the
unique trajectories of an industry’s
evolution
Using a singular interpretation of Recognizing that there are multiple
capitalism to analyze a region’s or an forms of capitalist economic
economy’s environmental conditions structures, each with unique
constaints and possibilities that
require contexualization when
designing studies
Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurs are rather homogeneous The social groups to which
in how they identify and pursue entrepreneurs belong influence
opportunities how the opportunity recognition
process and the paths pursued to
launch ventures to pursue those
opportunities
Entrepreneurs accumulate resources as a Resources available to entrepreneurs
means of findings ways to create value to orchestrate vary by the context of
for customers the region within which they work
as well as the strenght of formal
institutional rules

(Continues)

Traditional frameworks Open systems perspective

Informal entrepreneurship occurs Contextually, market opportunities

as entrepreneurs identify market occurring within emerging
opportunities related to differences economies differ by region and
between formal and informal country, creating a need for
institutional rules and regulations and understanding unique formal and
the degree to which those opportunities informal institutional boundaries
are seen as legitimate when studying entrepreneurship
outside formal economic structures
Corporate Social Views about the purpose of the firm, Views about the purpose of the firm,
Responsibility the legitimacy of stakeholder groups, the legitimacy of stakeholder groups,
and the meaning of corporate social and the meaning of corporate social
responsibility (e.g., shareholder primacy responsibility (e.g., shareholder
vs broader stakeholder orientation) are primacy vs broader stakeholder
universally endorsed orientation) vary across national
contexts
The discretionary and ethical Cultural, institutional, political,
responsibilities of corporations are economic, and historic factors
largely independent of the societal and may lead to the institutionalization
institutional context of different views about the
discretionary and ethical
responsibilities of corporations
Firms’ CSR engagement in an emerging Firms’ CSR engagement in an
market context follows the same logic emerging market context may follow
than in a developed market context a different logic than in a developed
(e.g., it is motivated by the need to gain market context (e.g., ‘substitution’
legitimacy) vs ‘mirroring’ of institutional
arrangements)

Using the open systems perspective to examine corporate governance also draws atten-
tion to external governance factors by emphasizing the importance of business networks,
particularly in emerging market economies. Some of these networks have a formal struc-
ture (e.g., the South Korean chaebols, the Japanese keiretsu and other forms of business
groups), whilst others are more informal and based on inter-personal relationships (e.g.,
‘guanxi’ in the ethnic Chinese networks). Information sharing and the avoidance of con-
tract violation facilitated by these networks may mitigate the information asymmetries
and risks associated with agency problems, and therefore serve as a unique, external
channel of relationship-based governance that is distinctively different from the Western
type, market-based external corporate governance (Filatotchev et al., 2007). These net-
works offer an excellent opportunity for extending governance research in the context of
business and social networks as well as related concepts such as innovation ecosystems.
For example, in prior studies, there are arguments suggesting that business groups
are one of the most prominent features of the corporate sector in East Asian countries
(Khanna and Palepu, 2000). Information sharing and the avoidance of contract vio-
lation facilitated by these networks may mitigate the transaction costs associated with

‘institutional voids’, and therefore serve as unique coordination mechanisms. However,

there is an embeddedness of business groups in relational and cultural settings. The con-
tents of embeddedness vary depending on each nation’s institutional development paths.
For instance, business groups in China have a strong connection to the state, with gov-
ernment officers functioning practically as controllers of national resource allocation. In
Korea and Japan, business groups have emerged as family-controlled holdings, although
the governments in these countries are currently introducing far-reaching reforms to limit
the extent of family involvement (Aguilera and Crespi-Cladera, 2016). Several emer-
gent theoretical perspectives have relationships with new research questions such as the
following: How do business group members choose between sources of finance? What
are the different advantages and disadvantages of political connections that firms often
cultivate? How do they affect performance? Integrating classical internalization theory
with an institutional perspective within diverse contexts offers an important theoretical
extension of what we consider traditionally as a universalistic model of firm behaviour.
The open systems approach also points strongly to a need to rethink some fundamen-
tal assumptions of theoretical frameworks underpinning the main body of governance
research that seem to have an almost universal application in the Western context. For
example, Krause et al. (2016) observe that institutional characteristics of foreign product
markets influence the structure of boards of directors of US firms active in these mar-
kets. They argue that allocating greater, outwardly visible power to the CEO will build
the firm’s legitimacy among customers who are more comfortable culturally with high
levels of power distance. High power distance and respect for hierarchy are key cultural
and institutional features in many economies such as China, Japan, and the Middle East
in particular. Scholars interested in corporate governance issues build traditionally on
the agency framework and call for imposing checks and controls on CEOs’ power. They
rarely conceptualize boards as tools firms can use to manage product markets’ demand-
side uncertainty; however, the open systems perspective on corporate governance sug-
gests that this should be the case.
To summarize, the open systems perspective on comparative corporate governance
shifts emphasis on the importance of research contexts that differ significantly in terms
of information environment, time structure of transactions, and linkages between orga-
nizations and their external environments. This suggests that management processes and
their effect on individual firms in various contexts may differ. To address these theoretical
challenges, we also need to re-consider our application of key research frameworks that
scholars used widely in prior research, including agency theory and network and institu-
tional theories.

Translating Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship Theories

between Diverse Contexts
The development of the strategic management field is a remarkable success story
(Leiblein and Reuer, 2020). From the publication of Alfred Chandler’s classic book in
1962 to the current time, scholars chose and are choosing to study different issues asso-
ciated with strategic management. Central roles of formulation, implementation, eval-
uation, and control were an initial focus of strategy researchers. Managerial roles, with

respect to facilitating organizations’ efforts to render effective decisions as a means of

competing against rivals, is another focus area for strategy scholars. Ultimately though,
and in a combinative context, strategic management is ‘…about how to deploy input
factors to serve markets in ways that result in high levels of value creation from the in-
teraction between the firm and its customers, and simultaneously making sure that the
firm actually appropriates a substantial share of the created value’ (Foss, 2011, p. 3). In
Table I, we provide a summary of general assumptions and frameworks that underpin
traditional strategy research. As this Table also indicates, strategic management has a
deep involvement with conditions and factors in a firm’s external environment. In turn,
this involvement calls for scholars to examine research questions within the context of
the economic, social, cultural, and political realities within which firms compete.
Today, some are challenging strategy researchers to make certain that real-world phe-
nomena that address strategic problems in terms of managerial practice drive the design
and execution of their studies. O’Keeffe (2020) suggests that learning how to become
more adaptable, resilient, and capable of predicting environmental realities and trends
accurately are outcomes organizations should seek to achieve while implementing strate-
gies as a foundation for competing successfully in global environments. Overall, evidence
indicates that strategic management research is complex, ambiguous, and involves mul-
tiple interdependent relationships (Leiblein and Reuer, 2020). To enhance the quality of
strategic management studies’ results, scholars should pay close attention to the context
facing firms and their leaders that they choose to study.
Historically, strategic management research has relied on several fundamental but a-
contextualized frameworks, such as RBV, TCE, among others. Integrating strategy re-
search with an institutional perspective creates foundations for a contextually sensitive
theory in line with the open system logic, that informs work by strategic management
scholars. The traditional concern of institutional theory is with ‘…how various groups
and organizations better secure their positions and legitimacy by conforming to the rules
and norms of the institutional environment’ (Bruton et al., 2010, p. 422). Another per-
spective is that institutional theory explains ‘the adoption and spread of formal orga-
nizational structures, including written policies, standard practices, and new forms of
organization’ (David et al., 2019, p. 1). Institutional theory suggests that firms seek to
establish favourable impressions of themselves by their constituents as a means of ensur-
ing that they receive the resources required to support their functioning. Over time and
events, organizations develop an institutional logic, which is a set of historical patterns
of managerial practices and symbols that provide meaning to their actions (Thornton
et al., 2012). This logic provides a context within which firms choose and execute their
strategies as a means of competing successfully against rivals. In this sense, institutional
theory, and the more comprehensive organization theory with which it has an affiliation,
examines how organizations respond to environmental pressures strategically.
A few decades ago, several conditions caused managers to pay additional attention
to institutional factors and their influence on competitive actions when forming their
organization’s strategies. Increased competition (particularly from Japanese competitors
during the 1970s and 1980s), the emergence of total quality management as a potential
source of competitive advantage, and dynamic and rapid changes in technologies avail-
able to firms as a source of competition are examples of these conditions (Steidlmeier,
© 2021 Society for the Advancement of Management Studies and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Contextualizing Management Research 1045

1993). To deal with the effects of institutional factors such as these, managers have two
tasks –managing the firm’s technical environment and managing its institutional en-
vironment. Decisions regarding the technical environment, which involve acquiring
needed resources consistently from the external environment, concern forming and ex-
ecuting strategies to positioning products or services in a manner that is relevant com-
petitively as a foundation for operating effectively and efficiently. Managing the firm’s
institutional environment ‘…stresses the role played by culture elements –symbols, sto-
ries and myths, cognitive elements, normative beliefs –and the social sources of these
elements’ (Steidlmeier, 1993, p. 196). The nature of this link describes the context within
which the firm’s institutional logic influences the strategies it chooses to implement when
engaging in competition with rivals. These links vary across firms in that each of them
faces idiosyncratic environmental conditions. Thus, the link between strategic manage-
ment and institutional theory considers firms’ efforts to achieve ‘optimal distinctiveness’
in terms of strategic positioning relative to rivals while simultaneously conforming to
institutional demands to remain recognizable in meaningful ways to peers and other
stakeholders such as customers. This means that firms seek to be both ‘like’ and ‘different
from’ their competitive rivals (Deephouse, 1999).
Institutional theory informs scholars’ efforts to understand situationally appropriate
ways for organizational leaders to manage their firm’s task environment and its institu-
tional environment. Contextually though, and using the open systems perspective, task
environments and institutional environments vary across countries and regions. Even
in Western-based economies, different forms of capitalism are in use. (We speak to the
Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) issue later in the paper as well in the context of corporate
social responsibility).
Given these perspectives regarding varieties of capitalism, scholars should adopt an
open systems perspective when using institutional theory to understand how firms com-
peting in a specific and unique form of a capitalist economy manage their firm’s task and
institutional environments. More specifically, because a ‘…home country’s institutional
environment causes differences in strategy…’ (Witcher and Chau, 2012, p. 4), adopt-
ing an open systems’ perspective when designing their studies allows scholars to include
expectations about firms’ environment into the relationships they choose to test. For
example, Hall and Soskice (2001) suggest that liberal market economies (ones in which
a firm’s financial stakeholders receive the firm’s primary attention) yield conditions that
are conducive to firms’ efforts to produce radical innovations.
As discussed previously, agency theory is one of the dominant theories used to engage
in strategic management research (Bendickson et al., 2016). Agency theory has an estab-
lished and rich history with strategic management research. However, findings resulting
from these studies are mixed and not necessarily congruent with agency theory’s tenets
in several instances. For example, evidence from studies drawing from agency theory
to understand relationships between CEO pay and market performance, variance in
pay and a firm’s financial performance, and managerial incentives and their effect on
managers’ assumptions of risk in making decisions is mixed and inconclusive (Payne and
Petrenko, 2019).
Despite inconsistency in results, scholars’ use of agency theory yields valuable insights
about efforts to select and implement an organization’s strategies successfully. Strategy
© 2021 Society for the Advancement of Management Studies and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
14676486, 2022, 4, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joms.12754 by Maastricht University, Wiley Online Library on [23/01/2025]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
1046 I. Filatotchev et al.

researchers could potentially generate additional insights through a concerted effort to

contextualize their studies using agency theory. For example, what might the relationship
between incentives and managers’ orientation toward risk be in firms operating in the in-
formal economy, in particular in emerging markets as opposed to the developed Western
economies, where formal institutional rules and regulations could be lax and ineffective?
Further, Davis et al. (1997), while advocating for the value of stewardship theory as a
lens to understand organizational relationships, question the constrained and negative
perspective about human behaviour and individuals’ morality that is part of ‘classical’
agency theory arguments. Concentrating on these negative attributes precludes consider-
ation of the effects of other behaviours such as altruism and intrinsic motivation, on the
principal/agent relationship. For example, scholars can adopt an open systems perspec-
tive to draw insights from stewardship theory to examine agency relationships in not-for
profit organizations (Van Puyvelde et al., 2016). Other critics (e.g., Heath (2009)) suggest
that describing and expecting opportunistic behaviour on an agent’s part may contribute
to the occurrence of corporate scandals. Regardless, strategy studies designed and con-
ducted to test relationships grounded in agency theory tenets require contextualization
as a means of increasing the likelihood scholars will generate valid results with the possi-
bility of informing managerial practice meaningfully.
Entrepreneurship represents another fertile ground for research contextualization
building on the open system perspective. Table I provides an account of some fundamen-
tal building blocks supporting contemporary entrepreneurship studies. In Schumpeter’s
(1942) view, entrepreneurs introduce new combinations –new products, services, pro-
duction methods, or industrial combinations. This process, which Schumpeter labelled
creative destruction, results in market disequilibrium initially. In an overall sense, oppor-
tunity recognition, launch, development, and operation of new ventures are concerns of
entrepreneurship (Hoskisson et al., 2011). Evidence suggests that the pursuit of opportu-
nities drives entrepreneurship rather than ownership of a set of resources (Kellermanns
et al., 2016). Overall, opportunity-seeking behaviours capture a significant amount of ac-
tions entrepreneurs pursue to earn profits by outperforming rivals (Ireland et al., 2003).
Institutional theory then is available for scholars to use when studying how entrepreneurs
recognize and pursue opportunities by establishing a new venture.
The resource-based view of the firm is another prominent theory scholars use to study
entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs. RBV arguments suggest that entrepreneurs (and
managers) create and appropriate more value than competitors due to the characteris-
tics of their resources and how those resources are assembled, integrated, and managed
(Sirmon et al., 2007).
Context, however, is critical when using resource-based arguments to study entrepre-
neurs and/or entrepreneurship. For example, evidence suggests that entrepreneurial ac-
tivities have a grounding in a region or a country’s culture and that national cultures
constrain entrepreneurial firms’ actions (Hayton et al., 2002). Moreover, after reviewing
the evidence, Bruton et al. (2018) note that entrepreneurship has characteristics that
vary substantially across countries and regions. These authors also note that to date, a
significant percentage of the work completed to understand entrepreneurship in China
uses Western-based theories without adequate contextualization to accommodate local
conditions and realities.
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Contextualizing Management Research 1047

Some believe that emerging economies are gaining stature and importance as global
marketplaces (Foo et al., 2020). The issue here is that emerging economies are a differ-
ent context compared to developed economies, perhaps especially Western-developed
economies. More specifically, emerging economies exist in a context with markets and
institutions that differ substantially from those associated with developed economies. ‘For
entrepreneurial phenomenon, these institutional differences include lacunae in formal
structures, such as low quality of contract enforcement; lack of labor and financial mar-
ket intermediaries, such as executive search firms and VCs; and less developed informal
institutions, such as an ecosystem of mentors and advisors’ (Foo et al., 2020, p. 290).
Similarly, informal entrepreneurship, which occurs when an entrepreneur launches a
venture without registering it with government agencies, occurs commonly in emerging
economies (Bu and Cuervo-Cazurra, 2020). An issue here is that an analysis of formal
firms is the foundation for developing many Western-based theories such as agency the-
ory, transaction cost economics, and the resource-based view of the firm. To study infor-
mal entrepreneurship, scholars, using an open systems perspective, must understand the
context within which informal entrepreneurial ventures exist and compete. This under-
standing is necessary for researchers to use established theories in a contextually relevant
manner.
These arguments suggest that institutional theory has the potential to inform entrepre-
neurship research; accordingly, we provide possible applications within a more general
open systems perspective in Table I. In spite of this encouraging evidence, Tolbert and
colleagues (2011, p. 1332) suggest that, ‘…those working in the tradition of institutional
theory and those studying entrepreneurship have rarely addressed one another directly’.
This is unfortunate in that unlike economic theories, which essentially argue that rec-
ognition of an opportunity is the force driving an entrepreneur’s decision to launch a
venture to earn profits, institutional theory suggests that decisions to establish a firm are
social products influenced by an individual’s determination of what is appropriate eco-
nomic behaviour. The alternative institutional theory perspective generates an array of
questions for scholars to pursue such as the meaning and composition of organizational
structure in an entrepreneurial venture.

Understanding Corporate Responsibility and Stakeholder Relations

Across National Contexts: Institutional and Cultural Perspectives
Companies have different approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stake-
holder management (Aguilera et al., 2008; McWilliams and Siegel, 2001). Similarly,
senior executives hold different views about the role of business in society and the legiti-
macy of stakeholder groups (Pless et al., 2012; Stahl and Sully de Luque, 2014). Pless et
al. (2012) distinguish between the traditional economist, opportunity seeker/strategist,
integrator, and idealist orientations. On the one extreme, the traditional economist view
–embodied in the ‘Friedman doctrine’ that ‘the social responsibility of business is to in-
crease its profits’ (Friedman, 1970, p. 32) –holds that business leaders should show little,
if any, concern for the interests of stakeholder groups beyond shareholders. On the other
extreme, the idealist perspective –often espoused by social entrepreneurs and represen-
tatives of NGOs –lacks a concern about profit-and shareholder wealth maximization;

instead, serving the interests of a particular stakeholder group, who is the core reason for
founding the organization, is this perspective’s main or sole concern.
The above orientations illustrate the range of beliefs that individuals and corporations
may hold regarding businesses’ obligations to society and CSR specifically. They rep-
resent two primary manifestations of corporate responsibility: a limited economic view
emphasizing shareholder primacy, and the idea that corporations and their leaders are
responsible to a broader set of stakeholders including shareholders/investors, employ-
ees, consumers, and society at large. The latter perspective is gaining significant trac-
tion recently, as evidenced by the Business Roundtable’s much-heralded decision to drop
the shareholder primacy creed that has been a mainstay of capitalism, and certainly of
Western-based capitalist structures, for decades. In 2019, 181 CEOs of America’s largest
corporations adopted a new Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation declaring that
companies should serve not only their shareholders, but also deliver value to their cus-
tomers, invest in employees, deal fairly with suppliers, support the communities in which
they operate, and protect the environment (Business Roundtable, 2019).
The Business Roundtable’s decision to depart from the shareholder value model has
been praised in the media as ‘potentially revolutionary’ (Colvin, 2020). However, it is
important to note that the debates over the Business Roundtable’s move away from the
Friedman doctrine reflect a very Western-centric view. In many parts of the world, the
notions that a corporation’s principal purpose is maximizing shareholder return and that
executive decision-making should focus solely on profit maximization has always been
considered an extreme position and unacceptable (Waldman et al., 2020).
As outlined in Table I, contrary to the universalistic claims of principal-agency the-
ory, normative stakeholder theory, and other relevant theoretical perspectives emanating
from Western and, in particular, North American contexts, an open systems perspective
of CSR suggests that there is a set of social, political, economic, and historic factors that
may lead to the institutionalization of very different views about the purpose of the firm
and the meaning of social responsibility (Filatotchev and Nakajima, 2014). Aguilera et
al. (2008, p. 836) argue that, ‘because business organizations are embedded in different
national systems, they will experience divergent degrees of internal and external pres-
sures to engage in social responsibility initiatives’. A growing body of research demon-
strates that conceptions of CSR, firms’ propensity to engage in CSR, and stakeholders’
attitudes towards CSR vary significantly across national contexts (Miska et al., 2018;
Williams and Aguilera, 2008).
Hall and Soskice (2001), in their influential work on Varieties of Capitalism (VoC),
proposed that nations can be divided into two types based on their institutional ar-
rangements, with implications for corporate responsibility and stakeholder governance.
Liberal market economies such as Britain, Canada, and the US demonstrate relatively
free-market arrangements, open labour-market relationships, and shareholder primacy.
As such, the needs and interests of stakeholders other than shareholders receive lower
priority and only instrumental consideration as far as they affect shareholder interests. In
contrast, in coordinated market economies, such as Germany, Japan, and Scandinavian
countries, senior executives are more likely to focus on a broader group of constituents
in their decisions. In these ‘stakeholder capitalism’ environments, the expectation is that
firms will protect employee rights, collective bargaining tends to be coordinated, and
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Contextualizing Management Research 1049

various groups assess corporate returns on a more long-term basis (Aguilera and Jackson,
2010; Witt and Redding, 2012). Thus, corporations and their leaders are likely to adopt
a more comprehensive approach to CSR, taking into account the needs and interests of
a wider range of stakeholders.
Witt and Stahl (2016), in a comparative study of senior executives’ responsibility ori-
entations toward key stakeholders, tested these assumptions in a sample of 73 top-level
executives (i.e., chairmen, CEOs, or presidents) of large companies in three Asian (Hong
Kong, Korea and Japan) and two Western (the US and Germany) economies. They
found that senior executives’ views about the purpose of the firm and the legitimacy of
various stakeholder groups varied significantly across institutional and cultural contexts.
While, for example, top executives in the US were almost unanimous in believing that
executive decision-making should be driven by the goal of shareholder value maximiza-
tion, Japanese CEOs stressed the need to contribute more broadly to society. CEOs in all
five economies regarded shareholders as a key stakeholder group, but in Germany and
Japan executives expressed a negative attitude towards them, even questioning the right
of shareholders to become involved in managing the company. In contrast, the vast ma-
jority of US executives identified the pursuit of shareholder value as the main reason for
the firm’s existence. Thus, the very meaning of corporate responsibility may vary across
cultural and institutional contexts.
These results also demonstrate that the traditional, seemingly clear-cut divide in
comparative management research between Western and non-Western contexts is too
simplistic and potentially misleading. In terms of corporate engagement in CSR and
stakeholder relations, the coordinated market economies of Germany and Japan, despite
significant differences in national culture, seem to have more in common than countries
sharing a common cultural heritage, such as Germany and the United States, or Japan
and Korea (Witt and Redding, 2012). Thus, there is a need to clarify the connection be-
tween national culture and institutional arrangements.
Institutional theory and dimensional models of culture that enable comparisons across
multiple cultural contexts can inform our understanding of the role of CSR in different
national settings; however, further contextualization is needed to better understand the
complex interplay between formal institutions (e.g., legal and regulatory frameworks) and
informal institutions (e.g., cultural values) and how they affect CSR, along with political,
economic, and historic factors (Aguilera and Jackson, 2010). Also, contextualization is
needed to account for the fact that the very meaning of ‘corporate responsibility’ may be
subject to contextually contingent differences in interpretation.
In describing how and why corporations should meet their social responsibilities to
society, Carroll (2015) distinguishes between legal responsibilities (required by society),
ethical responsibilities (expected by society), and discretionary responsibilities (desired by
society). While there is little disagreement (at least, in most Western contexts) regarding
what constitutes the legal responsibilities of corporations, the ethical and discretionary
obligations of businesses towards society –which are at the core of most definitions of
CSR (e.g., McWilliams and Siegel, 2001) –are ill-defined and continuously under public
debate as to their legitimacy. They also vary significantly across institutional and cultural
contexts. For example, lifetime employment in Japan represents a social norm, but no
legal requirement. According to the law, laying off large numbers of workers is actually
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1050 I. Filatotchev et al.

easier in Japan than in many European countries, but is considered socially unacceptable
and there is strong pressure on companies not to engage in this practice, unless it is vital
to the corporation’s survival. In this sense, providing lifetime employment for a Japanese
company does not constitute a discretionary CSR activity, as it would, for example, for a
US company; rather, it can be described as a quasi-mandatory requirement, and viola-
tion of this societal expectation may have serious reputational consequences for a com-
pany. Thus, the same activity –providing job security –may be discretionary in country
A (the US), quasi-mandatory in country B (Japan), and protected by the law in country
C (France).[2]
Another reason why contextualization of theory and research on CSR is critical is
the emerging trend of developing market firms to engage in CSR. As Doh et al., 2016,
p. 302) noted, there has been much debate on ‘whether and how established theories of
management and international business should be revised or extended, given the differ-
ent institutional and cultural contexts in which developing country multinationals have
emerged. … In particular, very little attention has been directed toward the …corporate
social responsibility practices of developing country multinationals’.
Doh et al.’s (2016) call for more contextualized research on CSR in emerging markets
is timely given some seeming anomalies that emerged from existing research in this area.
One such ‘anomaly’ is the rather counterintuitive observation that companies operat-
ing in an environment characterized by ‘institutional voids’ (Khanna and Palepu, 2000)
may engage in more, not less, discretionary CSR than companies operating in environ-
ments characterized by strong institutions. Doh et al. (2015) found that firms operating
in an emerging market context voluntarily engage in CSR activities to signal to investors,
customers, and other stakeholders that they are legitimate partners in the absence of
strong governmental controls, e.g., by promoting human rights, protecting the natural
environment, and reducing poverty. In this regard, discretionary CSR serves as a strate-
gic differentiator and can provide a source of competitive advantage for multinational
corporations vis-a-vis local firms.
Very much in line with the open systems perspective advocated in this Point paper,
engagement in CSR in an emerging market context may thus follow a different logic
than in a developed market context (see Table I). The ‘mirroring’ logic (Jackson and
Apostolakou, 2010) assumes that to gain legitimacy in a given market, companies need
to do what is required by the law, regulations and social norms. One of the implications
of this logic is that in environments where strong institutions exist, relatively little can be
gained by firms by engaging in voluntary efforts that go beyond what is prescribed by the
law and common practice. By contrast, the ‘substitution logic’ (Doh et al., 2016) assumes
that under conditions of deficient or weak institutions, companies may engage in CSR to
meet critical stakeholder needs and gain an edge over competitors. CSR in an emerging
market context can thus be understood as a vehicle to convey important information
about the overall soundness of the company, its trustworthiness, and its ability to make
credible commitments to business partners.
Contextualized research into the dual logics behind CSR, such as Doh et al.’s (2015)
in-depth case research on the micro societal factors leading emerging market firms to de-
velop unique forms of CSR that are distinct from their developed country counterparts,

can help reconcile seeming anomalies in theory and generate important new insights into
the drivers of CSR activities in different national contexts.

DISCUSSION
In this Point paper, we explore how to enrich the analysis of topics such as corporate gov-
ernance, strategic management, entrepreneurship, and corporate social responsibility by
accounting for different organizational, cultural and institutional contexts. Having said
this, developing an ‘open systems’ perspective on management does not imply only that
there is a need to adapt existing theories and models to the realities of the contextual
diversity of the modern world.
Our arguments suggest that there is a more general need for new theory building
within an open systems perspective about management. For example, Filatotchev et al.
(2020) focus specifically on the role of power and power relations in making sense of
how management and organization studies treat issues of cultural, institutional, and
philosophical divergence. These authors emphasize the need to be mindful that we can-
not compare the different institutional and cultural contexts within which organizations
exist and from which various topics of research and domains of knowledge emanate in
any neutral or apolitical sense. As Boussebaa and Morgan (2014, p. 98) argue, ‘national
contexts are not simply different institutional settings, separate and distinct from each
other; they are in practice entwined and located in a hierarchical system of nations dom-
inated by imperial powers (e.g., Britain in the nineteenth century and then the USA after
1945)’. All of this points to the need not only for more contextually sensitive research
within management and organization studies but also to the need to adopt theoretical
frameworks and methodological approaches that enable scholars’ efforts to examine and
explore the socio-political conditions within which organizations operate and that give
rise to particular worldviews that reflect powerful nations and groups’ interests.
This argumentation provides important opportunities for theory building. From an
open systems perspective, scholars can contemplate how a different conceptualization of
why firms exist would influence their scholarship. For example, with respect to corporate
governance, an emergent socio-political perspective suggests that how markets react to
a firm’s actions are an outcome of stakeholders’ perceptions of its legitimacy rather
than rational, efficiency-centred production and distribution decisions. Today, scholars,
business practitioners, and societies in general are challenging the very foundations of
the ‘shareholder supremacy’ perspective of corporate governance and corporate social
responsibility. Simultaneously, we are experiencing a resurgence of the concept of cor-
porate purpose, along with the creation of a new category of corporations –‘Profit-with-
Purpose Corporations’. This new perspective, which in the past few years surfaced in the
corporate law of several countries, including the USA and France, adds to the traditional
governance objectives related to the company’s financial performance an explicit com-
mitment toward a wider societal purpose within the bylaws. In line with the open system
perspective, Filatotchev et al. (2020a) argue that changes in organizational context drive
corporate governance innovations towards a greater account of stakeholders’ interests.
Existing theories of corporate governance, such as agency theory, are limited in terms of

explaining antecedents and outcomes of corporate governance innovations. Because of

this, scholars and the academic disciplines within which they situate their questions re-
quire novel theoretical approaches to inform our understanding of contemporary gover-
nance in today’s diverse institutional and cultural contexts (Scherer and Voegtlin, 2020).
With respect to strategic management, Alvarez et al. (2020) argue that many of the
extant theories regarding the reason firms exist address a firm’s boundaries. The focus
here is on economic activities within a firm’s boundaries and outside its boundaries.
However, evidence suggests that increasingly, today’s firms operate in ecosystems. The
type of structured cooperation among firms characterizing operations within an ecosys-
tem reduce the value of attempts to understand economic activities within and outside
a firm. Thus, a new and potentially more relevant conceptualization of why firms exist
could focus on individual organizations’ roles within ecosystems and the value they cre-
ate as a member of such systems. What actions would firms take to form and execute
strategies within the context of one or more ecosystems rather than within the context
of competing against rivals as an individual competitor? What is the nature of a firm’s
external context as a member of an ecosystem? From whom would firms obtain and
absorb resources needed to compete successfully? What is the meaning of the principal/
agent relationships among firms embedded and operating within an ecosystem? How
might ecosystems attempting to compete as constellations of firms establish legitimacy?
As we see, a new conceptualization for the reasons for firms to exist generates a large set
of research questions for scholars to pursue. To do so would require scholars to ‘stretch’
current theories (e.g., agency theory, institutional theory, and the resource-based view of
the firm) to develop contextually relevant relationships for empirical testing.
These insights and ideas have profound epistemological and methodological impli-
cations when viewed through an open systems lens. Importantly, they highlight the ur-
gent need for a more in-depth understanding of how various aspects of the context
shape corporate governance arrangements, entrepreneurial mind-sets, corporate social
responsibility approaches, and so on –and, thus, the need to contextualize our theories
and research approaches in management. Tsui et al. (2007) call for a poly-contextual
approach to comparative studies and pose important questions about the relationship
among culture, institutions, and other national differentiators, including aspects of the
political, economic, historical, and social context. Shapiro et al. (2007) introduced the
term ‘poly-contextualization’ to describe the process of incorporating multiple contexts
for a holistic and valid understanding of any phenomenon in it. They argue that much
of current research tends to rely on a single context (e.g., institutional arrangements); in
turn, they propose a poly-contextually sensitive research methodology to guide compar-
ative research.
A poly-contextual approach is challenging because it requires management scholars to
draw not only on established theories in comparative management, such as institutional
theory, but also on theories from organizational sociology, psychology, political science,
cultural anthropology, and other disciplines, to help understand management-related
phenomena in a particular context. This approach requires multi-disciplinarity, epis-
temological openness, and methodological pluralism. Perhaps most important of all, it
requires a more reflexive stance in our research endeavours. As noted above, this may
involve interrogating taken-for-granted assumptions and reflecting on our own role in
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Contextualizing Management Research 1053

generating the knowledge we use to understand organizations and make sense of phe-
nomena in them, including our own biases and epistemological ‘frames’ that inform our
theories and guide our choice of research designs and methods. As Jack et al. (2008) point
out, much of the research in management is functionalist and ‘positivist’, concerned with
fixed, universal relationships rather than emergent, context-sensitive patterns. There are
alternative epistemologies and methodological approaches available that allow manage-
ment scholars to contextualize their research, including indigenous perspectives, post-
colonialist lenses, and emic approaches to the study of culture (e.g., Jack et al., 2008;
Tung and Stahl, 2018). In line with an open-systems perspective offered by Thompson
(1967) and others (e.g., Freeman, 1984; Scott, 2003), contextualizing research using these
alternative lenses and approaches has the promise for offering unique, holistic and unbi-
ased insights into management phenomena in different national contexts.
To conclude, there is a need for alternative epistemologies and ontologies that provide
different lenses with which to study organizations and their management practices in
different parts of the world, in the process generating alternative ideas about what orga-
nizing means and what its dominant enactments are producing in both ideological and
practical terms. As we face both an unprecedented threat to the future of the planet as
well as severe disruptions to our lives associated with COVID-19 pandemic and other
destabilizing conditions, these are critical considerations and challenges. In response,
scholars should think about how to conduct research studies with a strong likelihood of
yielding results that when translated can affect societies positively by highlighting effec-
tive managerial practices.

NOTES
[1] Zahra and Wright (2011) distinguish between different dimensions of context, including spatial (e.g.,
the geographic locus of management activities and institutional and cultural factors) and temporal
(e.g., critical events and grand challenges facing societies) aspects. Although our paper’s focus is on the
spatial dimensions of context, other dimensions are also considered, where appropriate.
[2] We thank Professor Michael Witt (INSEAD) for this important insight.

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Contextualizing Management Studies

Uploaded by

Contextualizing Management Studies

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Journal of Management Studies 59:4 June 2022

Contextualizing Management Research: An Open

Igor Filatotcheva,b, R. Duane Irelandc and

ABSTRACT Management researchers rely frequently on theoretical perspectives originating

surrounding phenomena or temporal conditions directly influence lower-­level phenom-

Western-­Centric Biases in Management Theories: A Misrepresentation of

Contextualizing Management Research: An Open Systems Perspective

Comparative Corporate Governance: Thinking outside the Confines of

Traditional frameworks Open systems perspective

Traditional frameworks Open systems perspective

Informal entrepreneurship occurs Contextually, market opportunities

‘institutional voids’, and therefore serve as unique coordination mechanisms. However,

Translating Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship Theories

respect to facilitating organizations’ efforts to render effective decisions as a means of

researchers could potentially generate additional insights through a concerted effort to

Understanding Corporate Responsibility and Stakeholder Relations

explaining antecedents and outcomes of corporate governance innovations. Because of

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surrounding phenomena or temporal conditions directly influence lower-level phenom-

Western-Centric Biases in Management Theories: A Misrepresentation of