We analyze historical and longitudinal research focusing on industry decline. Our analysis suggests that the literature’s general reliance on a few meta-theoretical arguments has important consequences for how decline is framed and explained. We identify four meta-theoretical clusters in the literature: politics and market dynamics are seen as exogenous factors with deterministic features, whereas technology and management capabilities are framed as firm-internal failures with causally questionable explanations of how firm-level characteristics explain industry-level decline. We propose that it is important to understand the limitations of distinct meta-theoretical arguments for an enhanced theoretical and methodological understanding of what industry decline is, how it takes place, and why. Accordingly, this study contributes to business history research by restructuring and clarifying latent theoretical issues, demonstrating the pros and cons of researchers’ choices, and offering guidelines and propositions for researchers interested in industry decline.
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