Continuous Research Pendulum International Administration of Organizations : The Functionalist Positivism to Qualitative Research and Ethnographic

The aim of this paper is to analyze the theoretical methodological construction of reality explanations of international management phenomena in organizations. It departs from the assumption that classical theories of international management of organizations have evolve in parallel form to the prevalent scientific paradigms in that epoch. It is demonstrated in this paper that the theoretical methodological developments have fluctuated in a pendulum continuum from positivist epistemological conceptions of science in one extreme, going through the functionalism, structuralism, institutionalism, neoinstitutionalism, social constructivism and critical interpretative to achieve el opposite extreme with the qualitative and ethnographic research approaches