What Are Mechanisms? Ways of Conceptualizing and Studying Causal Mechanisms

Over the last two decades, much of management research has converged on the belief that one of its major aims is to identify the causal mechanisms that produce the phenomena that researchers seek to explain. In this paper, we review and synthesize the literature that has amassed around causal mechanisms. We do so by detailing the different methodological perspectives that are featured in management research, which we label as the contextual, constitutive, and interventionist perspectives. For each of these perspectives, we examine what it theoretically presupposes a mechanism to be, how this connects to methodological choices, and how this shapes the kind of mechanism-based explanations that each perspective offers. We also explore the main inferential challenges for each of these perspectives and offer specific methodological guidance in response. In this way, we aim to offer a common plank for theorizing and research on causal mechanisms in ways that recognize and harness the productive differences across different epistemologies and methodological traditions.