Types of case study research

454 out of 689. Of the 235 remaining theory-oriented case study publi- cations only 23 are presented as theory-testing studies. This is only 3 per cent of the total number of published case studies in ISI journals.

2.2 Review of methodological discussions on case study research

A number of journals in business research have published articles in which the methodology of case study research is discussed and, sometimes, promoted as a valuable research strategy see below. These articles: ■ argue that case study research is useful for some topics or questions or research objectives objectives; ■ claim that case study research can meet general quality criteria such as validity and reliability and illustrate this by giving lists of advice and criteria guidelines; or, ■ use such guidelines in evaluations of published research evaluation. We will comment on these three themes objectives, guidelines, and evaluation, rather than discuss these articles in detail, because the fol- lowing chapters of this book will explicitly or implicitly deal with the arguments of these articles.

2.2.1 Objectives of case study research

Case study research has been advocated as a valid research strategy in marketing Bonoma, 1985, operations management McCutcheon and Meredith, 1993, management information systems Benbasat et al., 1987, and strategy Mintzberg, 1979; Eisenhardt, 1989; Larsson 1993. Most of these authors consider case study research as a useful research strategy a when the topic is broad and highly complex, b when there is not a lot of theory available, and c when “context” is very important. It is claimed that all these three conditions hold for many topics in business research. Based on such arguments, most authors advocate the use of case study research for studies with exploratory aims. Several authors provide a list of topics or questions for which they deem case study research particularly useful. Suggested topics in marketing include, marketing strategy development and implementa- tion, business reengineering and customer service, and the formation of organizational ethical orientations as they pertain to marketing 24 Valentin, 1996; Perry, 1998; Johnston et al., 1999. In Operations, the management of environmental policies in operations, the dynamics of technology implementation, and differences between manufacturing and service operations management provide, according to these authors, interesting opportunities for case study research McCutcheon and Meredith, 1993; Ellram, 1996; Meredith, 2002; Stuart et al., 2002. Some authors elaborate on the use of case study research for testing purposes. Bonoma 1985, for instance, proposes a four-step process for conducting case study research that is oriented to theory-testing. Johnston et al. 1999, Wilson and Woodside 1999, and Hillebrand et al. 2001 also advocate case study research as a strategy that is useful for theory-testing.

2.2.2 Guidelines for case study research

Several articles such as McCutcheon and Meredith 1993, Ellram 1996, Perry 1998, Hill et al. 1999, Stuart et al. 2002, and Voss et al. 2002, provide broad guidelines for applying case study research. Perry 1998 provides a blueprint for case study research in marketing at the Master’s and PhD level. The section on implementing case study research methodology discusses how to formulate questions and set up an interview protocol, how to select cases for replication, how many cases to select based on the information richness, and how to analyse the cases within case and cross-case analysis. McCutcheon and Meredith 1993 give a basic introduction to the methodology of case study research in which they focus on case study research for explo- ration, although they also acknowledge that it can be used for explana- tion. Based on their experience as reviewers of papers using case study research in academic operations management journals, Stuart et al. 2002 describe a number of weaknesses that they believe are common in case study research papers. Based on this analysis, they provide sug- gestions for designing and conducting the research itself but also for writing the research paper. They discuss how to anticipate the common criticisms of reviewers in order to increase the chances of acceptance of the paper. Voss et al. 2002 provide guidelines for the design, execution, and analysis of case study research. The paper discusses both theoretical issues and practical recommendations. Halinen and Törnroos 2005 provide general guidelines for doing case study research on business networks in a similar vein. They provide a list of 11 consecutive steps with specific issues related to each of them, from problem formulation to the publication of the case study results. Other