Embracing Causal Complexity

TLDR

Causal complexity is a pervasive feature of organizational phenomena, yet existing management theories and methods are ill‑suited to study it directly, a gap that the QCA configurational approach has begun to fill. The authors argue that QCA research signals the rise of a neo‑configurational perspective that enables fine‑grained conceptual and empirical study of causal complexity, and they outline a research agenda to advance this approach and shift management inquiry from net effects to causal complexity. The article identifies four foundational elements of the neo‑configurational perspective—case set‑theoretic configurations, set membership calibration, necessity and sufficiency causal relations, and counterfactual analysis of unobserved configurations—and reviews how QCA has been applied in management studies to illustrate its evolution.

Abstract

Causal complexity has long been recognized as a ubiquitous feature underlying organizational phenomena, yet current theories and methodologies in management are for the most part not well-suited to its direct study. The introduction of the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) configurational approach has led to a reinvigoration of configurational theory that embraces causal complexity explicitly. We argue that the burgeoning research using QCA represents more than a novel methodology; it constitutes the emergence of a neo-configurational perspective to the study of management and organizations that enables a fine-grained conceptualization and empirical investigation of causal complexity through the logic of set theory. In this article, we identify four foundational elements that characterize this emerging neo-configurational perspective: (a) conceptualizing cases as set theoretic configurations, (b) calibrating cases’ memberships into sets, (c) viewing causality in terms of necessity and sufficiency relations between sets, and (d) conducting counterfactual analysis of unobserved configurations. We then present a comprehensive review of the use of QCA in management studies that aims to capture the evolution of the neo-configurational perspective among management scholars. We close with a discussion of a research agenda that can further this neo-configurational approach and thereby shift the attention of management research away from a focus on net effects and towards examining causal complexity.