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Chapter 11: Case Research - Coggle Diagram
Chapter 11: Case Research
Key Decisions in Case Research
First: is this the right method for the research question being studied?
Second: what is the appropriate unit of analysis for a case research study?
Third: should the researcher employ a single-case design?
Fourth: what sites should be chosen for case research?
Fifth: what techniques of data collection should be used in case research?
Conducting Case Research
Define research questions: defining research questions that are theoretically and practically interesting, and identifying some intuitive expectations about possible answers to those research questions or preliminary constructs to guide initial case design.
Select case sites: the researcher should use a process of "theoretical sampling" to identify case sites. Case sites are chosen based on theoretical, rather than statistical consideration.
Create instruments and protocols: an interview protocol should be designed to guide the interview process. The interview protocol must be strictly followed, and the interviewer must not change the order of questions or skip any questions during the interview.
Select respondents: select respondents at different organizational levels to obtain divergent perspectives.
Start data collection: after each interview is completed, the entire interview should be transcribed verbatim into a text document for analysis.
Conduct within-case data analysis: the researcher can interview data subjectively to "make sense" of the research problem in conjunction with using personal observations or experience at the case site.
Conduct cross-case analysis: the researcher should look for similar concepts and patterns between different case sites, ignoring contextual differences that may lead to idiosyncratic conclusions.
Build and test hypotheses: the researcher should compare the emergent constructs and hypotheses with those reported prior literature to make a case for their internal validity and generalizability.
Write case research report: the researcher should describe very clearly the detailed process used for sampling, data collection, data analysis, and hypotheses development, so that readers can independently asses the reported inferences.
Interpretive Case Research Exemplar
Initial interviews with CEO: CEOs were asked questions about their firm's strategy, distinctive competencies, major competitors, performance, and recent/ongoing major strategic decisions.
Interviews with division heads: asked 16 open-ended questions ranging from their firm's competitive strategy, functional strategy, top management team members, frequency, and typical decision making processes.
Questionnaires: executive team members complete a survey questionnaire that captured quantitative data on the extent of conflict and power distribution in their firm.
Secondary data: industry reports and internal documents of the executive teams financial performance of firms, and so forth were examined.
Personal observation: researcher attended a 1-day strategy session and a weekly executive meeting at two firms in her sample.
Positivist Case Research Exemplar
System-determined theory: resistance was caused by factors related to an inadequate system such as technical deficiencies, poor ergonomic design, or lack of user friendliness.
People-determined theory: was caused by factors internal to users, such as the accountants' cognitive styles or personality traits that were incompatible with using the system.
Interaction theory: resistance was not cause not by factors intrinsic to the system or the people, but by the interaction between the tow set of factors.
Comparisons with Traditional Research
The problem of controlled deduction refers to the lack of adequate quantitative evidence to support inferences, given the mostly qualitative nature of case research data.
The problem of replicability refers to the difficulty of observing the same phenomenon given the uniqueness and idiosyncrasy of a given case site.
Case research tends to examine unique and non-replicable phenomena that may not be generalized to other settings.
British philosopher Karl Popper described for requirements of scientific theories.
theories should be falsifiable
they should be logically consistent
they should have adequate predictive ability
they should provide better explanation than rival theories.
Case Research: also called case study, a method of intensively studying a phenomenon over time within its natural setting in one or a few sites.