RETROSPECTIVE Comparing capitalisms and taking institutional context seriously Gregory Jackson 1 and Richard Deeg 2 1 Free University Berlin, Boltzmannstr. 20, 14165 Berlin, Germany; 2 Temple University, 1228 Anderson Hall, 1114 Polett Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA Correspondence: G Jackson, Free University Berlin, Boltzmannstr. 20, 14165 Berlin, Germany. Tel: +49 30 838 56809; e-mail: gregory.jackson@fu-berlin.de Abstract A major limitation of existing international business (IB) research remains the rather thin view of institutional context. In this retrospective, we reflect upon and highlight different strategies for overcoming de-contextualized perspectives and developing thicker conceptions of institutions drawing on comparative comparative research. Institutions shape firm behavior not only through their direct or additive effects, but have more complex influences by moderating relationships between firm-level variables or having interactive or configurational effects related to wider sets of institutions. These views can each be extended by adopting a dynamic perspective examining how multinational enterprise (MNE) agency contributes to processes of institutional change. Ultimately, a large gap remains in taking institutions seriously that IB scholars could fill by developing middle-range theories that link and compare how particular kinds of institutions or instituional configurations influence particular kinds of MNE activities. Journal of International Business Studies (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-018-0206-0 Keywords: comparative thinking; qualitative/quantitative comparisons; institutional theory; capitalism; comparative management; comparative organizational studies; Dec- ade Award INTRODUCTION Institutional theory is now perhaps the most common lens for understanding cross-national differences in business organization, arguably eclipsing cross-cultural theories related to Hofstede or similar approaches. Although the importance of institutional factors for shaping activities of multinational enterprises (MNEs) is widely acknowledged (Peng, Sun, Pinkham, & Chen, 2009), the understand- ing of institutions in international business (IB) scholarship remains relatively thin. Institutions are understood as the rules of the game, but often interpreted as exogenous constraints on rational economic behavior and strategies of MNEs. Most IB theories continue to conceptualize institutions in terms of their overall ‘‘quality’’ or the ‘‘distance’’ between home and host country institutions. The former stresses the degree to which institutions approximate an idealized benchmark of best practice (usually US institutions), whereas the latter stresses the degree to which host institutions differ from those of the home country. Both quality and distance concepts enabled a rich agenda of quantitative empirical research based on institutional indicators, but retain a thin view institutional difference as a matter of degree along a single dimension. Received: 5 October 2018 Revised: 5 December 2018 Accepted: 6 December 2018 Journal of International Business Studies (2019) ª 2019 Academy of International Business All rights reserved 0047-2506/19 www.jibs.net