Abstract
Context constitutes an important across management, organization studies, international business research, and in the social sciences more generally. In qualitative methods, in particular, a more profound engagement with context yield deeper insights into the studied phenomenon and various methodological contributions have highlighted its relevance for theorizing, developing local knowledge, and creating context-specific solutions. At the same time, the philosophical assumptions underlying these manifold definitions have largely remained unchallenged and unproblematized. In the present paper, our general aim is to consolidate and advance the literature on context and contextualization in management, organization, and international business studies. To do this, we engage in a construct clarity involving ‘differentia’, i.e., sets of characterizing or qualifying criteria in order to categorize the key definitions found in the literature and compare them to everyday use of context. The ultimate aims is to bring forth the assumptions underlying such differentia and in so doing strip down the surplus meaning that has accumulated over the years. We consequently suggest a new indexical definition of context, whereby we emphasize a fixed meaning, i.e. interrelationships to support understanding, and a dynamic component, which varies depending on the adopted paradigm. By further relating each of these dynamic components back to one of the commonly used synonyms of context, we demonstrate that our field might benefit from moving beyond a single construct to a family of concepts to capture the subtle, but important differences between the different conceptualizations of context in the academic literature.