Actionable Guidelines to Improve ‘Theory-related’ Contributions to International Business Research

The editors of most scholarly journals in business and management, including international business (IB) journals such as JIBS, expect authors to make a ‘theory-related’ contribution. Many submissions are rejected outright by the journal’s reviewing editor or after review by field experts because of an insufficient theory-related contribution. In this article, we provide ten actionable guidelines to help authors clarify their theory-related contribution to an extant body of scholarly research, thereby avoiding commonly made mistakes.
As a preamble to our ten guidelines, we should like to note that it matters much to frame an empirical phenomenon, a research gap and a research question by using field-specific ‘language’. Appropriate framing means that the author demonstrates adequate knowledge (even when adopting a critical perspective) of the field’s main building blocks, including the shared assumptions and common variables viewed relevant by scholars in the field, to examine a series of phenomena of interest. In the case of IB research, these shared assumptions and variables are related to the purposes and goals of IB activities. Shared assumptions and variables are also related to the characteristics and motivations of the parties involved. These parties include the actors steering the internationally operating firm and those affecting the achievement of its goals, as well as the market and non-market institutions that can influence IB. Finally, shared assumptions and variables are linked to a myriad of outcomes of IB activities, both intended and unintended ones.