Case studies in Operations

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 39 153 244 689 454 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