Cross-Level IB Theory Development (jibs-theory-development)

When to trigger

• Your hypotheses read as "A relates to B" with no IB mechanism
• Country or culture appears in the model but is not theorized as a level
• You are unsure whether your moderator is a cross-level or same-level effect
• A reviewer says "the theoretical contribution to IB is unclear"

Theorize across levels, not just across borders

JIBS's signature is that country and culture are levels of analysis. Strong JIBS theory makes the cross-level logic explicit:

• Name the levels. Individual, firm/subsidiary, and country. State which level the focal construct, the cause, and the outcome each live on.
• Specify the cross-level mechanism. How does a country/culture-level condition (institutions, cultural values, distance, political risk) shape a firm- or individual-level process? Avoid "anthropomorphizing" a country — translate the macro condition into the micro mechanism it operates through.
• Distance and asymmetry. If you invoke "distance" (cultural, institutional, geographic, psychic), theorize its direction and asymmetry — the effect of country A on B need not equal B on A. Treat distance as a mechanism, not a black-box covariate.
• Boundary conditions. State the conditions under which the IB mechanism holds or reverses across contexts; JIBS prizes boundary conditions over universal claims.

Anchor in an IB theoretical tradition

Ground the argument in a recognizable IB lens — internalization/transaction-cost, the OLI/eclectic paradigm, the Uppsala internationalization-process model, institutional theory (including institutional voids and distance), the resource-/knowledge-based view applied to the MNE, springboard/LLL perspectives for emerging-market MNEs, or cross-cultural value frameworks. Then state precisely how you extend, qualify, or challenge it. Borrowing a non-IB theory is welcome only if you show what it adds to IB.

Context as theory, not as setting

The decisive JIBS distinction is between papers that merely run in a foreign context and papers whose theory needs the context. Apply two tests:

• Deletion test. Delete every country and culture name from the theory section. If the argument survives intact, context is a setting — the paper is a general-management study wearing international data, and the theory section must be rebuilt so a contextual condition does causal work inside the mechanism.
• Substitution test. Move the mechanism to a different country pair. If your theory cannot say what would change and why, the contextual variable is decorative. Strong JIBS theorizing specifies which institutional or cultural parameter the mechanism runs on, so substitution yields a prediction rather than a shrug.

Passing both tests is what turns "context as evidence" into a contribution about how the international environment itself operates.

Hypotheses

Derive hypotheses a priori from the mechanism (not after seeing results). For internationalization-as-process arguments, be explicit that the relationship may be dynamic and path-dependent — this foreshadows the dynamic-endogeneity concern reviewers will raise in analysis. Each hypothesis should name the level, the direction, and the boundary condition.

Micro-rewrite (before → after). Before: "H1: Top-management-team international experience is positively related to firm internationalization." — level-blind, mechanism-free, no IB content beyond the adjective. After: "H1: The positive effect of TMT international experience (firm level) on internationalization speed weakens as home–host institutional distance (country-dyad level) increases, because experiential knowledge transfers poorly across dissimilar regulatory regimes." The rewrite names both levels, carries the mechanism in the causal clause, and builds the boundary condition into the prediction itself.

Operating pass for Journal of International Business Studies

Use this as a second-pass capability check. First lock the cross-border mechanism, level of analysis, institutional context, and generalizability claim; then test whether the manuscript addresses international-business reviewers who expect cross-border theory, context sensitivity, and credible firm or institution evidence.

• Primary move: Return a claim-evidence-risk ledger; every recommendation must point to a manuscript location or missing artifact.
• Decision ledger: return claim / evidence / blocker / next edit rows so the next pass can patch the manuscript directly.
• Neighbor test: compare against Strategic Management Journal for strategy theory, Journal of Management for broader management, International Business Review for applied IB breadth; if the neighboring outlet has the stronger audience claim, recommend re-routing before polishing.
• Verification floor: before submission-ready advice, re-open resources/official-source-map.md for volatile rules and name the one unresolved fact that could change the recommendation.

Output format

【Levels & mechanism】country/culture-level condition → micro process → outcome ...
【IB lens】internalization / OLI / Uppsala / institutional / springboard / ...
【Distance logic】direction & asymmetry theorized? ...
【Hypotheses】H1..Hk with level, sign, boundary condition (a priori) ...
【IB contribution claim】what the field learns ...
【Next step】jibs-literature-positioning then jibs-methods

Anti-patterns

• Anthropomorphizing countries ("Japan prefers...") instead of theorizing the micro mechanism.
• Using cultural/institutional distance as an unexplained covariate with no directional logic.
• HARKing — presenting post hoc hypotheses as a priori.
• A generic management mechanism with the word "international" added but no IB content.