Extracting relevant evidence How to design and conduct a theory-building case study

an outcome. In our approach to the theory-building case study, the lack of criteria for the quality in this exploration activity is balanced by an emphasis on quality control after a candidate concept has been “dis- covered”. This is discussed below.

9.1.5 Coding

If theory-building research stopped at the point depicted by Figures 9.1 and 9.2, and if the resulting candidate concepts in a publication were offered to other researchers for testing, the study would hardly qualify as research and could better be called a form of “intensive exploration”. As we discussed in Chapter 8, we consider it essential to good theory- building research in contrast to mere “exploration” that the emerging proposition is proven to be true in the instances studied and that, thus, the candidate concept is measured in a valid and reliable way in these instances. A first necessary step is that the concept is defined precisely after its “emergence”. This step is not different in principle from how definitions of concepts are usually developed, i.e. if the researcher wants to define a concept that has not been “discovered” in theory-building research. The usual criteria such as precision and non-ambiguity apply. Grounded Theory argues that, if a theory is “discovered”, the defini- tion of the concept should be “grounded” in the data collected in the study. For instance, Strauss and Corbin 1998 describe how a concept that is discovered in “open coding” can be refined and defined in a next step of coding which they call “axial coding”. In our view, such a grounding of a definition is not a requirement for good theory-building research. However, an advantage of axial coding is that, when a concept is defined, its value in the different cases is already validly “measured” because the GT result consists of a definition of the concept with references to the data in which it was “grounded”. If a definition of a concept is derived in another not “grounded” way, or if we start with known concepts as in Figure 8.1, a next neces- sary step in the research is to develop a valid and reliable measurement instrument. Procedures for measurement are discussed in Appendix 1 “Measurement”.

9.1.6 Data presentation

The result of a successful measurement is that the scores of the rele- vant concepts are known for each case. These scores can be presented in a data matrix. The simplest form is a matrix consisting of two columns, one for concept A and one for concept B, and a number of rows one row for each case. This matrix is the basis for the final analy- sis of the theory-building case study.

9.1.7 Data analysis

The aim of this analysis is to draw a conclusion about a whether there is a relationship between the concepts A and B or not and, if so, b what type of relation this is. We advise starting this process of “discovering” relations between concepts by determining whether the stronger types of causal relations deterministic ones are discernable in the data matrix and to look for weaker causal relations probabilistic ones if such stronger types are not found. The rationale of this procedure is that it is important to find strong causal relations which, say, explain 100 per cent of variance if they exist. Or, in other words, this procedure helps the researcher to avoid the error that only a probabilistic relation is dis- covered even in situations in which the data matrix contains evidence for stronger relations. The exploration of the data matrix is proposed in this order: 1. looking for a sufficient condition; 2. looking for a necessary condition; 3. looking for a deterministic relation; 4. looking for a probabilistic relation. We will discuss now how this could be done.

9.1.7.1 Sufficient condition

First, assess whether there is evidence for a sufficient condition. A suf- ficient condition exists if a specific value of concept A always results in a specific value of concept B. The existence of a sufficient condition in the selected cases can be assessed by ordering the data matrix in such a way that cases with the same value of concept A are grouped together. If the value of concept B is constant in a subgroup of cases with the same value of A, then this can be taken as evidence that this specific value of A is a sufficient condition for the value of B observed in this subgroup of cases. This procedure is very similar to the way in which a