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Introduction
Case study as a research strategy often emerges as an obvious option for students and other new researchers who are seeking to undertake a modest scale research project based on their workplace or the comparison of a limited number of organisations. The most challenging aspect of the application of case study research in this context is to lift the investigation from a descriptive account of 'what happens' to a piece ofresearch that can lay claim to being a worthwhile, if modest addition to knowledge. This article draws heavily on established textbooks on case study research and related areas, such as Yin, 1994, Hamel et al., 1993, Eaton, 1992, Gomm, 2000, Perry, 1998, and Saunders et al., 2000 but seeks to distil key aspects of case study research in such a way as to encourage new researchers to grapple with and apply some of the key principles of this research approach. The article explains when case study research can be used, research design, data collection, and data analysis, and finally offers suggestions for drawing on the evidence in writing up a report or dissertation.
When to use Case Studies
Case studies as a research method or strategy have traditionally been viewed as lacking rigour and objectivity when compared with other social research methods. This is one of the major reasons for being extra careful to articulate research design, and implementation. On the other hand, despite this scepticism about case studies, they are widely used because they may offer insights that might not be achieved with other approaches. Case studies have often been viewed as a useful tool for the preliminary, exploratory stage of a research project, as a basis for the development of the 'more structured' tools that are necessary in surveys and experiments. For example, Eisenhardt (1989) says that case studies are:
Particularly well suited to new research areas or research areas for which existing theory seems inadequate. This type of work is highly complementary to incremental theory building from normal science research. The former is useful in early stages of research on a topic or when afresh perspective is needed, whilst the latter is useful in later stages of knowledge (pp.548-549).
This is however a somewhat narrow conception of the application of case...