The insights from the crowd: Drawing inferences from many approaches to key empirical questions in international business
Journal
Journal of International Business Studies
Journal Volume
56
Journal Issue
9
Start Page
1102
End Page
1124
ISSN
0047-2506
1478-6990
Date Issued
2025-11-05
Author(s)
Delios, Andrew
Hu, Tianyou
Yu, Shu
Zhou, Nan
Ahsan, Faisal M.
Bahl, Mona
Bai, Tao
Basu, Madhurima
Bathula, Hanoku
Batsakis, Georgios
Carneiro, Jorge
Chakravarty, Dwarka
Chen, Danyang
Chen, Weihong
Chen, Ying-Yu
Dau, Luis Alfonso
Deng, Shu
Dikova, Desislava
Fan, Xiaomin
Gada, Viswa Prasad
Huang, Dongdong
Kim, Hyun Gon
Kim, Kyungjoong
Kubíček, Aleš
Li, Chengguang
Li, Wen Helena
Li, Yi
Li, Yuanyuan
Liu, Huanchen
Liu, Wei
Ljubownikow, Grigorij
Louis Vincent, Racheal
Machek, Ondřej
Manocha, Parul
Matsumoto, Yoichi
Mumi, Atthaphon
Niu, Chao
Nuruzzaman, N.
Panicker, Vidya Sukumara
Parboteeah, K. Praveen
Qiao, Wei
Qiao, Xiaole
Sethuram, Shyamala
Shen, Ao
Shi, Lei
Sinani, Evis
Sivakumar, Sandeep
Soon, Pei-Shan
Stallkamp, Maximilian
Tinits, Priit
Tolstoy, Daniel
Tumasjan, Andranik
Varshney, Mayank
Velez-Calle, Andres
Wagner, Chris
Wang, Peng
Wang, Xingang
Wang, Yong
Wen, Liang
Wu, Tao
Yadav, Sandeep
Yan, Jiaju
Yang, Jing Yu
Zhang, Megan
Zhang, Weihao
Zhang, Yameng
Zhao, Yang
Uhlmann, Eric
Abstract
In this crowdsourced initiative, 57 independent analysts used the same longitudinal dataset to address four major empirical questions in international business. For all four research questions, different analysts obtained substantial estimates in opposite directions, meaning that they could have drawn any conclusion at all had they conducted the project alone. Aggregating across the results obtained by different analysts pointed to an overall answer for two of the four research questions, although for one of the two questions, the evidence was more suggestive than conclusive. That said, the variability in results was not simply random, and could in some cases be meaningfully explained. Choices regarding how to operationalize variables played an important role in determining the empirical results, and expert analysts were more likely to report large positive effects. Rather than exhibiting a bias to confirm their pre-existing beliefs, analysts appeared to rationally update their beliefs considering the evidence. Overall, these findings empirically demonstrate the role of subjective researcher choices in shaping results in international business research yet also show that it is still possible to draw meaningful conclusions in science. We advocate for an open science of international business in which the consequences of subjective analytic choices are rendered as transparent as possible.
Subjects
Crowdsourcing
Entry mode strategy
Many analysts
Multinational firms
Open science
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Type
journal article