Case studies in Strategy

it also publishes many articles on case study research on the interface of Strategy and Operations.

2.1.3 Case studies in Finance

We found 47 publications in ISI journals on case studies in finance and accountancy. Only the journal Accounting, Organizations Society pub- lished more than five articles. The majority of the publications in ISI journals appeared in categories other than the ISI category “Finance and Accounting”. This may indicate that case study research is not well accepted in this field.

2.1.4 Case studies in Marketing

We found 39 ISI publications on case studies in Marketing. The only journal with more than five case study research publications was Indust- rial Marketing Management, with seven papers. About half of the publica- tions were published in journals outside the field of marketing research. None of the top marketing research journals e.g. International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Marketing Science have published on case study research. In Marketing, also, case study research seems to be not well accepted.

2.1.5 Case studies in HRM

We found 153 ISI publications on case studies in HRM. These papers were mainly published in HRM journals such as Human Relations, Human Resource Management, and Journal of Business Ethics, but, again, the International Journal of Operations Production Management was an important outlet for publications on case study research.

2.1.6 Case studies in Operations

We found 244 ISI publications on case studies in Operations. These publications were concentrated in the typical operations management and operations research journals, with the International Journal of 22 Operations Production Management and International Journal of Production Research as the most common outlets. The review shows that the International Journal of Operations Produc- tion Management is the one most important channel by which case study research is published. Not only are studies in Operations published in this journal, but also articles on the interface of Operations with Strategy and HRM. Almost 10 per cent 62 of all ISI listed publications on case study research in 2000–2005 689 have been published in this journal.

2.1.7 Types of case study research

We were not only interested in the number of publications on case study research but also in what types of case study research were reported in these publications. In particular we were interested in how the published studies are divided over the categories theory-testing, theory-building, and practice-oriented research. In order to classify these publications, we relied on the authors’ statements in the abstracts of the publications. We did not analyse all publications in their entirety. Most case studies that are meant as a contribution to theory either building or testing theory state this explicitly in their title andor abstract. Therefore, we categorized studies with explicitly stated theory-oriented aims either theory-testing or theory-building first. Most of the remaining case studies describe the design, implementation, andor evaluation of some intervention, or illustrate the usefulness of a theory or approach to a specific company or situation. Although such studies might make use of theories or theoretical notions, their aim is not to contribute to the development of those theories. We use the label “practice-oriented” for this category of case studies. The results of our categorization are presented in Table 2.2. The large majority of published case studies are practice-oriented, namely Table 2.2 Three types of case studies in five fields of business research 2000–2005 Strategy Finance Marketing HRM Operations Total Practice-oriented 153 24 19 104 154 454 Theory-building 48 21 19 41 83 212 Theory-testing 5 2 1 8 7 23 Total 206 47 39 153 244 689