Causal Process Tracing: A new approach to studying the dynamics and evolution of business relations and networks

In this paper we describe an approach originally developed in political science, causal process tracing (CPT) or process tracing and show how it facilitates deeper understanding and researching of change processes in a business relation and its network. CPT originated in earlier research on process tracing systems but has been further developed to become a well specified methodology that can be used to study the change process in many types of socio-economic systems. To our knowledge CPT has not been used in the study of business markets. In this paper we describe this approach, its philosophical underpinnings and compare and contrast it with other approaches, including configural approaches, such as QCA, TQCA, event structure analysis and narrative sequence methods. We then show how it can be used to better understand the dynamics and evolution of business relations and networks and illustrate its use by analysing part of a case study of the development of a business relation.