Fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) is a method for assessing the effects of configurations of variables leading to an outcome. The recent growth of interest in this technique in organizational psychology is proving this method to be an important tool for addressing new and decisive research hypotheses. However, the effectiveness of fsQCA is dictated not only by its general principles, but also by how well these are understood and applied in the research community. Consequently, a guide that covers the fundamental ideas and tenets of the approach is required to aid the research community in its comprehension and practical application. The current study seeks to offer an understanding of FsQCA by providing: (a) A complete description of the method highlighting some of the most important theoretical-methodological aspects; (b) a perspective on the most used guidelines and recommendations, and (c) step-by-step instructions on how to carry out FsQCA in R using the QCA package. Data from 120 employees and supervisors derived from a company based in central Italy were used o best to illustrate how to carry out fsQCA. Codes for conducting the analyses from the QCA package for R accompany the tutorial and can be adapted to a new dataset.

Structural and sequential ambidexterity are proved to be two prevalent approaches in managing tension between exploration and exploitation. Dominant studies have treated the two approaches as mutually exclusive but have provided less insight about their combination, and the organizational configurations that advance such combination, which is a major meaningful gap explored in the current study. This study aims to explore the configurations of organization design choices to combine structural and sequential approaches from a holistic perspective. We apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze the empirical data collected from 102 firms in China. The results show that firms attain high ambidexterity with both separated and blended configurations. Blended ones demonstrate that the structural and sequential approaches can be combined in a way that one approach dominates and the other subordinates. Organizational design mechanisms regarding the configurations for combining structural and sequential approaches are concluded as multielements (complements and substitutes) and multilevels (fit and interaction). These findings are also interpreted through the Chinese ‘Yin-Yang’ framework, which introduces ‘Yin-Yang balancing’ into the ambidexterity literature.

This study adopts a configurational perspective to examine how business model designs and contextual factors in transforming economies combine to create value. We investigate configurations of efficiency-centered and novelty-centered business model designs, corporate ownership, development stage, and external regulatory volatility associated with high growth in a transforming economy. Using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of Chinese firms, we find five solutions associated with superior growth, suggesting that the effective configurations of business model designs vary in different contexts. Our study offers a holistic understanding of the relationship between business model designs and firm growth, and yields useful insights for business model designs for practitioners.

The relationship between internationalization and performance has attracted researchers’ attention for more than 40 years, producing contradictory results. Research on emerging-market (EM) multinationals’ performance has not added much clarity to the issue. Although contingency theory is widely applied in management research to explain superior organizational performance as a direct result of a ‘fit’ between structure, strategy, and environment, there has been little effort in extending the notion of strategy-structure-environment fit to include internationalization. We address this limitation by offering a comprehensive analysis of Russian internationalized firms’ performance, which reflects the complexity of strategic and structural changes that Russian firms make during internationalization. We use survey data on 213 predominantly private and mature firms to examine whether the alignment of a multitude of strategic and structural choices in a specific context matters for subsequent performance. We apply a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) and find several distinct types of ‘fit’ that positively affect Russian internationalized firms’ performance.

Pension reform is one of the top public policy priorities in advanced industrialized countries due to population ageing and the significant weight of pension spending in governments’ budgets. As a result of these concerns European countries have engaged in varying degrees of pension reforms over the last three decades. The extant literature on pension reform focuses on structural, institutional and blame avoidance theories to explain how pension reform take place. Yet, how do different conditions combine to lead to significant pension reform outcomes? To answer this question we analyze a set of 48 pension reform cases in eight European countries since the late 1980s up until 2014 by using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Our main finding is that institutional, structural or blame avoidance theories cannot account by themselves for instances of significant pension reform. Rather, we find three pathways that combine structural and institutional conditions to lead to significant pension reform.

Harmonisation and legal convergence are core tasks of the EU. This paper explores the question about the determinants for national convergence of EU law, specifically applied to the ever-growing body of European consumer sales law. The measurement of national convergence is based on a unique coding of five directives in seven Member States. Using the fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) method, the paper finds that differences in national convergence can partly be explained by favourable features of the corresponding directives; however, mainly, they are the result of a combination of domestic political factors and, to a lesser extent, the country characteristics. This has important policy implications, for instance, on the need to ‘bring in politics’ in the debate about convergence, harmonisation and consumer sales law.

This article contributes to a burgeoning literature on parliamentary war powers by investigating the case of the US Congress drawing on both International Relations (IR) research and traditional war powers studies. Applying a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis and case study method, we examine the conditions shaping congressional assertiveness. The article shows that the lack of national security interests and divided government are important conditions for members of Congress to criticize presidential intervention policies. While previous US war powers studies focused on the influence of partisanship, this article holds that domestic as well as international factors influence congressional behavior. A short comparative case study of two US military interventions (Libya 2011, ISIS 2014–15) during the Obama presidency serves to illustrate the findings.

In contrast to much of the political economy literature, this article explores acts of refusal that obstruct attempts to impose austerity measures on advanced industrial democracies. It thereby complements a literature that has thus far focused far more upon the (apparently unobstructed) imposition of austerity. In doing so, it uses two typically ‘low-resistance’ countries – Japan and the UK –as least-likely cases and finds that austerity is rarely uncontested. Using fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, it highlights the ‘causal recipes’ sufficient for both (1) anti-austerity activity to have a significant impact on austerity proposals and (2) the smooth (unobstructed) imposition of austerity. The politics of austerity is shown to be better understood as an iterative interaction between proposals for austerity and the acts of refusal they encounter. These obstacles to austerity appear more straightforward to activate effectively in Japan’s coordinated model of capitalism, whilst the UK’s liberal market economy tends to generate more innovative forms of dissent that (if they are sufficiently militant) provide an alternative route towards the obstruction of austerity.

Which conditions foster accountability for health policy implementation in Spain’s 17 regional governments? We analyze five conditions: private management of health services, political salience of health policies, governments’ left ideological position, strong presence of non-statewide parties, and minority governments. We use fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to identify how necessary and/or sufficient these conditions are (alone or in combination) to foster accountability. We find that there is no single recipe to ‘cook’ accountability. Three conditions appear to be ‘quasi-necessary’ but must be combined with others to foster accountability, thus defining three routes to accountability. The implications of the findings are discussed in light of current debates on the effects of decentralization, left-right ideologies, and privatization, on accountability for public policies.

This article examines the conditions under which governments increase spending on active labor market policies (ALMPs), as the European Union and the organization of economic co-operation and development recommend. Given that ALMPs are usually expensive and unlikely to win a government many votes, this study hypothesizes that an improving socio-economic situation is a necessary condition for increased spending. On the basis of the data of 53 governments from 18 established democracies between 1985 and 2003, the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis shows that there are different combinations of conditions, or routes, toward activation and that an improving socio-economic situation is needed for each of them. Specifically, the analysis reveals that governments activate under decreasing unemployment combined with (1) trade openness, or (2) the absence of corporatism in the case of leftist governments, or (3) the presence of corporatism in the case of rightist governments. These findings advance our understanding of the politics of labor market reform.