This article portrays a structurationist perspective for the empirical analysis of industries. It was developed at the Institute of Organization and Planning at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Central components of structuration theory, such as its conception of knowledge, action and social systems along with the duality of social structures are briefly reconstructed. With this, a general frame of reference is developed that is applied to the industry construct. This application is accomplished by integrating ideas from established perspectives on industries; i.e. economic, network, and cognitive perspectives. Based on this, the article draws conclusions for empirical research activities that centre round the notion of combining qualitative and quantitative research designs iteratively. The article concludes with insights on the benefits and challenges of such an approach to analyzing industries.