Tackling the Complexity Challenge: When and How to Engage in Configurational and Hybrid Theorizing

Abstract

Management phenomena are often causally complex, and management research has increasingly turned to a configurational perspective to better account for this complexity. Yet, despite recent attention to configurational theorizing, we still lack comprehensive guidance on when a configurational approach is most appropriate, leading to confusion and avoidable disputes in the review process. Moreover, despite growing calls for theoretical triangulation, our understanding of how configurational theorizing can be effectively combined with other theorizing approaches is limited, slowing the development of novel organizational theories and confining configurational inquiry to largely abductive research and ex post theorizing. We address these challenges in two ways. First, we articulate a framework of four key indications—causal conjunction, causal disjunction, outcome asymmetry, and outcome intentionality—that provide systematic guidance on when a configurational approach is warranted. Second, we introduce two configurational hybrid theorizing approaches that integrate configurational theorizing with propositional and process grammars. Specifically, we demonstrate how configurational-propositional theorizing can generate novel predictions about complex causal relationships, and how configurational-process theorizing can incorporate temporal dynamics through temporal-configurational layering. Together, these contributions broaden the theoretical toolkit for studying complexity and offer new ways to advance the configurational perspective and management theory more generally.