Cognitive Tendencies in International Business Research: Implications of a “Narrow Vision”

Some scholars have suggested that international business (IB) research suffers from a “narrow vision.” This paper tests this thesis by extending principles of the cognitive sciences to study the ontological and epistemological features of IB research from, 1970 through, 1997. Operationally, IB scholars' schematic representation of their logic of interpretation as indicated by, 159 figures, including 60 models, conceptualization, and frameworks, culled from 27 years of JIBS publication. Profiling these data by absolute and relative indicators of time shows that analog reasoning dominates present logics of interpretation in IB research. The longitudinal profile and time series analysis of the structural features of schematic representations in JIBS spotlights significantly decreasing comprehensiveness, connectedness, and complexity. I close by nothing the intellectual merit of scholars' call for dialectic inquiry. and the task this imposes on the community of IB researchers – particularly so within the Academy of International Business.© 1998 JIBS. Journal of International Business Studies (1998) 29, 837–855