AN OVERVIEW OF 10 YEARS OF QUALITATIVE METHODS AT JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STUDIES

This paper aims to present an overview of articles published in the Journal of International Business Studies (jibs), since 2003 till 2012. According to Web of Knowledge website, jibs is the most impacting publication focused in International Business. We analyzed 498 articles in order to select papers built under qualitative basis. We found 65 articles under this premise. Firstly, we analyzed keywords under topics focusing in the entire period (2003-2012). Secondly, we analyzed whole abstracts, focusing in the last five years (2008-2012). Afterwards, we detailed keywords, objectives, strategy of research, object, industry and region where they took place. We concluded that qualitative papers are losing space in jibs. Last years, quantitative papers are serving more to confirm what we know from other studies. Paradoxically, meanwhile complex institutional environments are gaining evidence in International Business, statistics and calculi are those which have been gaining space. More qualitative studies might provide an enriching strategy for better understanding what is going on in new boundaries of IB, like emerging countries. It is a goal of jibs to expand qualitative studies; it could represent opportunities to researchers from countries less researched, like Brazil.

Contributions for IB studies use to come from different sources, as it is an interdisciplinary field.jibs holds the most impacting factor of the journals in IB.According to the specialized website Web of Knowledge (2012), jibs is ranked as impact factor 3.557 (5.245 if considered 5-year ranking).Some of the most cited articles in the field mentioned above were published at jibs (anderson; gatignon, 1986; dunning, 1980, 1988; johanson; vahlne, 1977, 2009).jibs is aligned to theory improvement and methodological advances as stated at its website (jibs, 2012) as a commitment "to publish insightful, innovative and impactful research on international business".
Even the jibs Statement of Editorial Policy (jibs, 2012) states the journal seeks "to publish manuscripts with cutting-edge research that breaks new ground, rather than merely making an incremental contribution to international business studies", there is an interesting point that deserve attention: although jibs had been founded over a rich legacy of qualitative studies, nowadays "such methods [qualitative research] have been progressively marginalized in our field as quantitative methods have become the norm" (birkinshaw; brannen; tung, 2011).
We developed this study with the aim to contribute on understanding which type of research is following straightly the jibs Policy addressing real-world phenomena, problems or puzzles thru qualitative investigation an overview of 10 years of qualitative methods at journal of international business studies  (jibs, 2012).Specifically, we intend to know which themes have been researched in IB thru qualitative methods, associated to the keywords (2003-2012) and abstracts (2008-2012).We counted 498 papers (we didn't consider commentaries, perspectives and research notes).Sixty five articles were clearly qualitative or qualitative-quantitative studies, as Table 1.capabilities, strategy and theories.We depicted these generic topics in the next section, excepted internationalization process and methodology.Avoiding redundancies, we took out Internationalization Process because it is the main subject of jibs.We excluded methodology because it is intrinsic to the objectives of this article.
an overview of 10 years of qualitative methods at journal of international business studies

GENERIC TOPICS IN INTERNATIONAL QUALITATIVE STUDIES
We organized this section according to generic topics we grouped the 368 keywords.Albeit it means a generalist categorization, it may help to organize the corpus we researched, as proposed by Bardin (1977).

EMERGING MARKETS
Qualitative studies are helpful for studying specific markets, mainly emergent markets like India (khanna;palepu, 2004), Mexico (siegel, 2009) and China (hung;li;belk, 2007).Specifically, ten studies were performed in China, two in South Korea and India, and one in Mexico.Emerging Markets are investigated as destination of sales (Siegel, 2009) or specific characteristics, like Hung, Li and Belk. (2007).mne's from emerging markets have been studied by qualitative aspects (siegel, 2009).Some developing countries were also studied once: Chile, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, South Korea and Taiwan.

FINANCE/PERFORMANCE
Measurements usually are associated to quantitative studies.Surprisingly, performance has been studied by qualitative techniques (child; chung; davies, 2003; choi; chang-bum; beamish, 2004).Child, Chung and Davies (2003)  and Beamish (2004) studied interorganizacional relationships between mne's and local firms in Korea and performance they achieved as well.International alliances have been their performance analyzed comparing to cultural differences (sirmon; lane, 2004).Financing issues during crisis wereinvestigated by a case study of the Gulf Crisis of 1990 -1991, examining the behavior of the international oil market during that period (weiner, 2005).

INDIVIDUALITY/ENTREPRENEURSHIP ISSUES
The role of individuals, sometimes inside the organizations other times as subjects of entrepreneurship issues have been examined by qualitative studies in jibs.For example careers in internationalized companies were studies by Bolino (2007) andLau, Shaffer, andAu (2007).Also, expatriation is often studies by qualitative methods (bolino, 2007; carraher; sullivan; crocitto, 2008; lazarova; cerdin, 2007).Some critical points received attention in a cross-cultural analysis, like cronyism and corruption (khatri; tsang; begley, 2006) and opportunism (verbeke; greidanus, 2009).Entrepreneurship sometimes involves the role of individual as a resource to the organization (jones; coviello, 2005) or as a mentor of an internationalization action as a node of a network (coviello, 2006).Frequently the entrepreneurship is linked to born-global issues (coviello, 2006; fan; phan, 2007).

INDUSTRY
Specific industry studies have been performed in qualitative methods.The automotive industry was investigated by Moore (2011).He evaluated crosscultural relationships in the organization, and the interaction of manager and worker perspectives.Lamb, Sandberg, and Liesch (2011) analyzed crosscultural relationships in the organization, the interaction of manager and worker perspectives in small wineries.A longitudinal study in furniture industry was developed by Jonsson and Foss (2011).The service sector was also investigated, like Japanese trading (goerzen; makino, 2007) The place where knowledge is generated and how is transferred as also often researched (tippmann; scott; mangematin, 2012; martin; salomon, 2003).Knowledge and innovation were associated as capabilities in international competition (knight; cavusgil, 2004). in a broadly range, innovation systems have been investigated in qualitative methods, as Spencer (2003).

INSTITUTIONS
According to North (1990), institutions are the rules of the game.He considered that institutions may refer to formal and informal aspects.
In jibs it is evident.Formal aspects were in the lens of Jackson and Deeg (2008); informal aspects were present in Tsui-Auch and Mollering (2010).

INTERRELATION ISSUES
In this topic we considered behavioral and network issues.We included some subjective characteristics like emotion (lee; yang; graham, 2006), commitment (siegel, 2009) 2008) and civil society (teegen; doh; vachani, 2004).Some are related to network issues.Siegel (2009Siegel ( , p.1171) study used a "quasi-natural experiment from Mexico to examine the conditions under which forming a strategic alliance with a foreign multinational firm is actually a superior mechanism for ensuring good corporate governance".

RESOURCES AND CAPABILITIES
Firms need resources and capabilities to compete internationally (PENG, 2001).During last ten years resource-based view has been associated to IB studies (knight; kim, 2009; cuervo-cazurra; maloney; manrakhan, 2007; meyer; peng, 2005).Often, organization learning is listed as distinctive resource to conquest new markets (tippmann; scott; mangematin, 2012).Some studies reveal how domestic firms learns from foreign organizations by knowledge spillovers (eapen, 2012).Javidan (1998) considered that owning resources is not enough for achieving competences; it's necessary capabilities to arrange them.In fact, capabilities in international strategy is frequently researched, sometimes associated to innovation (knight; cavusgil, 2004), technology (martin; salomon, 2003), in a network perspective (yiu; lau; bruton, 2007) or even in a global wide range (london; hart, 2004).

STRATEGY
According to Dunning (1980), the decision to turn an organization international is a strategic choice motivated by a sort of aspects, like ownership, localization and internalization.This assumption is often mentioned in IB studies.For instance, Brown, Dev, and Zou (2003) studied how some absorptive capabilities are generated due ownership of hotels abroad.Meyer and Altenborg (2008) studies presented a shared ownership of stated-owned Scandinavian telecom companies were incompatible.Ownership and location were associated to strategic decision making by Filatotchev, Strange, Piesse, and Lien (2007: p.556).They presumed that "the entry mode and location decisions appear to be interrelated, with the parent's equity stake in the affiliate depending inter alia upon the location an overview of 10 years of qualitative methods at journal of international business studies within China, and the favored location depending inter alia upon the equity stake".Often Strategy is related to international market.Verlegh (2007;p.361)observed that consumer behavior is "biased in their evaluations of domestic products vs. foreign alternatives".Also, Shapiro, Ozanne and Saatcioglu.( 2008) observed cultural sensitivity in international business when compared consumers in Netherlands and usa.Besides those behavioral issues, performance is frequently linked to strategy in international business (capar; kotabe, 2003; choi; chang-bum; beamish, 2004).

TRAILS ON ABSTRACTS
After we grouped keywords in topics, we analyzed other aspects.We designed some further criteria in order to describe which themes have been investigated under qualitative methods.Hence, we included some additional information to this exploratory study, in order to organize comparisons on the final considerations.The categories we chose may highlight important aspects from the articles.Also, it may allow different way of analysis to who is interested in develop qualitative studies in IB as well.The categories are: a Strategy of investigation: we considered which were stated in the abstracts.We found study cases, ethnography, phenomenography, photo-elicitation, and research over previous registered interviews; b Object of study: For object of study we refer to the level of analysis.
an overview of 10 years of qualitative methods at journal of international business studies

RESULTS
This study aimed to offer an overview over theoretical-empiric studies published on jibs, since 2003 till 2012 (till November), based on abstracts, titles and keywords.

STRATEGY OF INVESTIGATION
Strategy of investigation is not an option.It depends on what the researcher need to answer.The research question is related directly to the choice of methods, and the methods section must be articulated to a particular qualitative method or combination of method to be applied (birkinshaw; brannen; tung, 2011).Abundance of data and access to them permitted a huge expansion of quantitative research.In these twenty seven articles we found twelve case studies, three ethnographic studies, three metanalysis, three triangulations (we included quantitative methods associated to qualitative), one phenomenography study, one photo-elicitation and one experiment.Observing last three years, it's relevant that in 2010 just three qualitative studies were published on jibs, among 62 papers (5%).It looks like that it was the institutional attraction of jibs raised 2011 results.After a special call of qualitative research papers, among 53 papers, nine were qualitative in 2011 (17%).Nevertheless, in 2012 (Jan-Nov), just two qualitative studies were published, among 33 (6%).

OBJECT OF STUDY
In this paper we considered object of study the level of analysis that authors appointed in their abstracts.All of them have organization as level of analysis.Even though some papers didn't declare size of companies, two groups have relevant presence: multinationals and small business.Usually, multinationals are an interesting field for research when it is necessary to make comparisons between subsidiaries.Small firms are investigated mainly in entrepreneurship issues.However differences must be related.
Comparisons between distinct behaviors in different countries were also related as object of study.International operations also were studied, like issn 2177-6083 sílvio luís de vasconcellos & outros ADMINISTR AÇÃO: ENSINO E PESQUISA RIO DE JANEIRO V. 14 No 2 P. 279-278 ABR MAI JUN 2013 joint ventures, alliances, merges and acquisitions.It's also relevant that individuals are often considered object of studies, coherent to qualitative study options.

OBJECTIVES
According to Eisenhardt (1989), case study research is a rich field to develop theory.Building theory in International Business involves a vast field, mixing different cultures, institutional environments, different industries, political adversities, and so on.The articles we've searched are committed to this challenge.In addition, some of them take more interpretative and inductive strategies, like ethnography.Contribution in theory is not just an idea for research, as written by Locke and Golden-biddle (1997).It must be socially accepted and recognized among researchers of organizational field.The authors aimed to connect innovation, culture strategy, conciliating to International Business research and enacting interdisciplinary as stated on jibs policy.Furthermore, qualitative researches allow depth analysis.It's clear in Balogun, Jarzabkowski, and Vaara's (2011) objective: "to explore the subtle dynamics in the way that both headquarters and subsidiaries subjectively reconstruct their independent-interdependent relationships with each other during change".Similar happen to Moore (2011).His intention was "to analyze cross-cultural relationships in the organization, the interaction of manager and worker perspectives, and the expression of national identities within the firm as its culture is negotiated".Relationships are in the gray area for statistical studies.It supposed to be more flattering subjective strategies of investigations to evaluate this mainstream.Peng, Sun, Pinkham and Chen (2009) considered how important should be to have more investigation in emerging countries.Actually, last year's an important volume of research is taking place far from developed countries.Just in these twenty seven papers four refer to studies at Chinese organizations, one in East Europe (Romania) and four in Latin America (Chile, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Mexico).The East

INDUSTRY
Among twenty seven qualitative research abstracts, just in seven we got to identify in which industry the research was performed.Automotive industry was investigated twice, and so telecom was.Also, restaurant, winery and furniture industries were space for researchers.In qualitative studies, the context is an important subject.Unfortunately, the most of researchers didn't mention it in the abstracts, keywords or even titles.

KEYWORDS
This item refers to the section 2.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
Even though jibs has been recognized as the main space for International Business Studies, editors are conscious about how important is to extend qualitative researches.According to Ellis (2010), the average effect size in international business research has been small.He considers that many authors confuse statistical with substantive significance when interpreting their research results.Hence, what we have is a lot of statistical confirmation about what we already know, endorsing the normal science predicted by Kuhn (1996).In a globalization era, even studies are becoming globalized, generalized.Comparison between different cultures by statistical methods represents risks.Cognitive perceptions of surveyed respondents may carry differences in understanding, language, even in ethics and moral that hardly could be registered by statistical methods.
This study intended to offer an overview over theoretical-empiric studies published on jibs, since 2003 till 2012, based on keywords and abstracts.Furthermore, it was an exercise to grasp qualitative studies and objectives we were seeking as prominent in IB.The proposal was achieved in different levels: Firstly, it presented the proportion of qualitative studies over the total published on jibs, showing that in interpretative approaches are becoming sparse.Secondly, keywords were analyzed and grouped by topics, evidencing fields which qualitative studies have been published in jibs.Thirdly, we grouped a keyword topic analysis section presenting some representative studies, as well as some connections they have among them.Finally, we detailed and analyzed twenty seven articles in order to provide information for further research thru a main panel, comprehending the last five years (Table 2).
It's noteworthy that there are gaps to be investigated.Considering just these ten years, nothing from South America (except Chile -del sol; kogan, 2007) and Africa were published under qualitative strategy of researching.BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) for instance was out of studies, but China (10) and India (2).Evaluation about understanding institutional involvement in IB is indispensable to know better the an overview of 10 years of qualitative methods at journal of international business studies ADMINISTR AÇÃO: ENSINO E PESQUISA RIO DE JANEIRO V. 14 No 2 P. 279-278 ABR MAI JUN 2013 interrelationship between countries, firms and individuals.During last decades, IB expanded as well people moved between subsidiaries.How they are dealing with it?How knowledge is flowing in different levels of analysis?How culture is related to many issues?There is an arsenal of questions to be answered and qualitative methods can be an interesting way of searching IB studies deeper.It's necessary to clarify that we don't intend to point this lack of investigation as some kind of rejection of interpretative papers made intentionally by editors.Better we would like to provoke reflections about the quality level of qualitative studies we are offering to academia.Producing interpretative studies doesn't mean to build data without connections to theory; as we are involved in a prevalent quantitative mindset it is severely important to be accurate in methodological steps, detailing them, checking evidences, confronting visions widely.
We consider the short period (ten years in keywords and five in abstracts) we investigated as limitation of this paper.A larger range of time could better stand for what has been published in jibs in qualitative strategies of research.Also, it could be extended to other relevant journals, even for comparison.Checking just abstracts and keywords is also a restraint.For future investigation we suggest strengthen the scope of investigation, comparing what has been searched also in quantitative approaches.It could provide interesting confrontation and new insights in order to give possibilities of understanding who researchers are talking about, what is the object of investigation, how researches have been processed, and, mainly, if the method is adequate to the investigation proposed.The largest sample isn't always the best one.Huge sampling sometimes can be compared to a map of a lake scaled 1:1 without depth for understanding from where the water comes.
vasconcellos & outros an overview of 10 years of qualitative methods at journal of international business studies issn 2177-6083 sílvio luís de vasconcellos & outros Hence, this study aims to offer an overview over theoreticalempiric studies published on jibs, since 2003 till 2012, based on keywords and abstracts published ate jibs website ADMINISTR AÇÃO: ENSINO E PESQUISA RIO DE JANEIRO V. 14 No 2 P. 279-278 ABR MAI JUN 2013 (jibs, 2012).

Table 2
Published jibs' articles developed over qualitativemethods -2008-2012 (alphabetical order) an overview of 10 years of qualitative methods at journal of international business studies ADMINISTR AÇÃO: ENSINO E PESQUISA RIO DE JANEIRO V. 14 No 2 P. 279-278 ABR MAI JUN 2013 Asia is predominant.Beside China, Japan and Korea have been fields of investigation.One study was made in Sweden, one in Australia, one in Italy, and two compared US to other countries (Japan and Korea).South America and Africa are still mysterious.