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Case study methodology in business research

Case study - Wikipedia

Using case studies for theory testing in business-to-business

single case study (page 4) a single case study is a case study with one case. i specifying a relation between a known (independent or dependent) concept and an as yet unknown (dependent or independent) concept – proposition-building by an experiment or a comparative case study. instances must be selected from the practice to which the research is oriented or from other practices that are similar. this chapter discusses how to design and conduct a case study in which a probabilistic relation is tested. exploratory case study research is not only good at investigating how and why questions. even though the study would have been set up according to scientific standards. which is in accordance with the fact that this kind of study is a quasi-survey.. cases (in case study research) are equally unrepresentative of a theoretical domain as populations (in survey research). although case study 2 is presented as a test of one typology. the individual researcher will personally benefit from the process of conducting the. the beginning of this study it was known which kind of dependent concept was sought. our position in this debate is that if the researcher wants to contribute to van de ven’s (1989) idea that “nothing is quite so practical as a good theory” he could best have a “pragmatic deterministic” view. but also to all other parties that are involved in the practice to which the research is oriented. when the service has become part of the business of the buyer. which is the universe of instances of the object of study in practiceoriented research. we think it is important to make this point because case study research is often promoted as particularly suited for generating new propositions in “exploratory” studies. only after such a test can the research contribute to the practitioner’s knowledge. this may indicate that case study research is not well accepted in this field. part iv deals with practice-oriented research in general (chapter 10) and the practice-oriented case study in particular (chapter 11). raf jans (chapter 2) raf jans holds a phd degree in applied economics with a specialization in operations research from the katholieke universiteit leuven in belgium. further found that only 12 out of the 55 studied publications made adequate references to the literature on case study research methodology.. begins with the general aim to contribute to a (yet unknown and thus to be specified) theory regarding the chosen research topic. determine the specific research objective (see flowchart 3a) i the objective of this study is to contribute to our knowledge about the use of the words proposition and hypothesis in business research by testing the hypothesis (hypothesis-testing practice-oriented research). ecological validity (page 47) ecological validity is the extent to which the outcome of a laboratory experiment applies to instances of the object of study in its real life context. similar to dul & hak - case case study methodology in business researchskip carouselqualitative researchinternational finance management accounting and finance managementfinance management notes mbabasic finance management1 research methodology in business[1]finance mgtproject report on crm in retailingcase study methodology in business researchcustomer relationship management in retail sector big bazaar(266851437)_mgmt20124_-_people,_work_and_organisations_(1) (1)a case study templatepercepcija kompetencija i suradnje strucdownload 9 dicussion questions.. i discovering and describing a relevant variable by a comparative case study. database sage research methods has some excellent material on the case method. business case studies can illustrate business theory and show the application of such theory.. instances of the object of study (or groups of instances or populations) in theory-oriented research must be selected from the theoretical domain to which the theory is assumed to apply. this chapter we assume that a practice-oriented research objective (hypothesis-testing.. therefore the measurement in a comparative case study consists of measuring the value of the dependent variable in each case. the outcome of the study concerns that small population and generalization will be sought by replication in other (possibly equally small) populations from the domain. review articles on case study research show that many case studies suffer from a lack of scientific rigour. very general format of a theory-oriented research objective must be further specified as one of two different types: (a) theory-testing research. st statement 2: effective redesign of a process can occur only if the redesigners seek to enhance the functional coupling in the business process through the use of technological as well as social enablers. it would have been acceptable for this theory-building study to select cases (i. a comparative case study two or more cases are selected that are as similar as possible but that have different values of the independent concept. to any measurement in any research strategy (see appendix 1: “measurement”). financial data must be recalculated in such a way that they exactly represent the researcher’s definition of the variable. case study 2 also provides a quite detailed description of how type of innovation was determined. processes of a case study methodology for postgraduate research in marketing.. would there be interest in research aiming at providing these practitioners with knowledge they need?.Journal of the operational research society harvard business review mit sloan management review strategic management journal academy of management executive international journal of technology management organizational dynamics organization science accounting. chris voss professor of operations and technology management london business school.: harvard business school cases are not available via the library but have to be purchased. a predicted continuously increasing or decreasing relation the measurement points (in the longitudinal case study) or cases (in the comparative case study) are ranked according to the value of the independent variable. analysis is the interpretation of scores obtained in a study in order to generate the outcome of the study. test (page 90) a test of a proposition (in theory-testing research) is determining whether a hypothesis that is deduced from the proposition is confirmed or rejected in an instance of an object of study (or in a group of instances or population). as mentioned earlier in the context of theory-testing research (chapter 4). types of case studies in five fields of business research (2000–2005).) could be read for discussing the implications of the research for theory and practice. the researcher might want to reformulate the tested proposition or to replicate the test in other instances. i case selection: arbitrary selection of two issues per journal and five research papers per issue.. is to select the maximum number of cases that are available and that can be handled within the resource constraints of the study. the aim of this exploration is to acquire real life experience regarding the object of study. the general research objective for such research can be formulated as follows:The objective of this study is to contribute to the knowledge regarding problem p {specify here the problem and its phase in the intervention cycle} by testing the following hypotheses h:{specify hypothesis h1} {specify hypothesis h2} {… etc. case studies aim to answer ‘how’ or ’why’ questions with little control on behalf of researcher over occurrence of events. the single case study is a good alternative research strategy. i how could research help to satisfy this knowledge need? such articles often conclude with a discussion of “managerial implications” in deterministic formats (such as “this study has shown that managers must do a in order to be successful”). we have accepted the definition of “case study” as used in these publications (which differ considerably). different meanings of the concept of success might be equally valid for a theory and it might be necessary to measure these three different aspects of “success” in one study. we will discuss qualitative analysis as applied in theorytesting case study research in chapters 5–7. but the degree of confidence that it is correct for a specified domain (or its generalizability) can be enhanced by repeated tests of its propositions in different parts of its domain until eventually a situation occurs in which researchers do not consider further testing useful. whereas it is perfectly acceptable in exploration to derive propositions from what practitioners (and other people) say about the phenomenon (whether or not this is based on evidence that is accessible to the researcher). harvard business case studies are not sold to libraries and can only be purchased via the harvard business publishing website. because we do not have an instance of a purchase of an instrumental service with low risk in our study. we describe in detail how to design and conduct different types of case study research. if we apply granovetter’s (1973) finding that new ideas often come from people outside the circle of family and friends (“weak ties”), it is hypothesized that new ideas and business opportunities will come from “new” partners, i. it is necessary not only to conduct “desk research” but also to communicate with insiders. her research deals with buyer–supplier interaction in purchasing and developing business services (http:/ /www. very general format of a practice-oriented research objective must be further specified as one of three different types. according to its design, case study research method can be divided into three categories: explanatory, descriptive and exploratory. such relations are assumed to be true for the object of study defined in the theory and they can. our approach to research in general and the case study in particular is characterized by a consistent conceptual structure which is only partly visible in the linear structure of the text. study 1 and case study 2 present similar theories, both of which explain success from organizational characteristics. related to the choices as described in the methods section) and its possible effects on the study’s outcome.. theory-testing research can also be seen as “filling a gap” in our theoretical knowledge. flowchart 2 presents a flow diagram with the order of activities that are needed for deciding about the type of theory-oriented research that should be conducted: theory-building. hence the study could be characterized as initial theory-testing research. have described how the type of proposition (either deterministic or probabilistic) determines which research strategy is preferred in theory-testing (chapter 4). one instance of the object of study (a case) in which condition a is present is selected. define the survey as a study in which (a) a single population in the real life context is selected and (b) scores obtained from this population are analysed in a quantitative manner. we claim that many causal relations in real life situations in business and management can be formulated as deterministic necessary conditions.

Using case studies for theory testing in business-to-business

Case study as a research strategy: Investigating extreme weather

we concluded that hypotheses 1 and 3–5 were confirmed in this study and that hypothesis 2 was rejected.):The general objective of this study is to contribute to the knowledge of practitioner p {specify the practitioner by mentioning a name and by referring to the real life context in which this practitioner acts or must act}. an alternative test is that one instance of the object of study (a case) in which effect b is absent is selected. the best strategy for testing a necessary condition is the single case study. number of instances would be observed in a serial single case study. 14 cases from the set of candidate cases were selected for the present study.. a “most likely” case is an instance of the object of study in which confirmation of the hypothesis is likely. our definition of the case study does not include statements on data collection or measurement techniques. candidate case is a member of a set of cases from which the researcher will select one case or a small number of cases for a case study. external validity (which is a characteristic of a study’s outcome) is not an issue in most forms of case study research because usually there is no population to which results are “generalized” (with exception of the quasi survey. theoretical domain (page 36) a theoretical domain is the universe of instances of an object of study of a theory.. many steps in designing and conducting a practice-oriented case study are exactly the same as in the theory-oriented. the selection of a case for a single case study is similar to the choice of a population for a theory-testing survey. from problem formulation to the publication of the case study results. in practice-oriented research a thorough exploration (of practice) is necessary in order to ascertain the most relevant knowledge need in this practice (and in what precise formulation). replication (page 41) replication is conducting a test of a proposition in another instance of the object of study (or in another group of instances or population). then we discuss each of these two types of research in more detail. the result of such an exploration of practice is knowledge regarding the actual variation of aspects of the object of study. bringing the activities of marketing agencies in line with kpn’s business strategy. one of the aims of exploration of theory is to identify in that field one or more specific theories that are relevant to the research topic. in this study the number of instances is too small for a statistical analysis.. an example of such a study will be discussed in chapter 11 (in 11. serial single case study (page 45) a serial single case study is case study research that is designed according to a serial replication strategy. because otherwise a survey would have been chosen as a research strategy. next we provide one or two examples of such a case study. exploration of theory (page 48) exploration of theory is collecting and evaluating relevant information for theory (in theory-oriented research) or for practice (in practice-oriented research) by conducting a literature review and communicating with experts. experiment (page 5) an experiment is a study in which one or more variable characteristics of an object of study are manipulated in one or multiple (“experimental”) instances of an object of study and in which scores obtained in the experimental instance or instances are analysed. research is building and testing statements about an object of study by analysing evidence drawn from observation. measurement validity in this example regards the validity by which the researcher identifies. we believe that the main reason for confusion regarding the role of case study research in theorytesting research is that. then the researcher can interpret the rejection as meaning that the proposition is not correct. with respect to the third option one could argue that we could not confirm the proposition because the test procedure that we employed in this study to accept the hypothesis was very strict: even a small deviation of one of the four organizational dimensions results in a rejection of that particular ideal type. about half of the publications were published in journals outside the field of marketing research. object of study is the distribution activities by retailers from a retailers’ distribution centre to the shops during one week. measurement methods that are usually associated with other research strategies. and as such is not related to the case study only. and for possible other topics to be discussed (see appendix 4: “writing a case study research report”). and methodologists about the definition and the main characteristics of case study research. if they ask researchers to design and conduct a study. part iii discusses theory-building research in general (chapter 8) and the theory-building case study in particular (chapter 9). the criterion for measurement validity of these procedures is whether they can be justified in terms of the researcher’s definition of delivery time. theory (page 34) a theory is a set of propositions regarding the relations between the variable characteristics (concepts) of an object of study in a theoretical domain. depicts the preferred research strategies for testing the different types of hypotheses. although in a case study quantitative data can be used to generate the scores to be analysed. the format depends on whether the case study is a separate publication or is located in a journal or book. barnes (2001) discusses the advantages and disadvantages of several measurement methods that can be used within case study research (ethnography..A comparative case study is the next best option (see box 9). with a case we mean an instance of an object of study.. research is building and testing statements by analysing evidence drawn from observation. or 11 could be studied depending on the specific type of case study that is conducted. it is decided after a successful exploration that hypothesis-testing research is needed. is not a replication study (in our definition of replication) but a good example of a theorybuilding comparative case study. and participating in them) can be completed in a relatively short time as a part of the development of a research proposal. whereas the aim of descriptive practice-oriented research is to discover and describe variables of a type that is already indicated in the knowledge needs (such as “what employees on the shop floor think about current working conditions”). advice is to find a candidate case for theory-building research in small populations in the theoretical domain. this indicates that case study research is not a well-accepted method in finance and marketing research.. the nature of the relationship between the type of representatives involved and success needs to be specified and tested in future research projects. object of study is the stable characteristic in the theory.-oriented: theory-testing, theory-building practice-oriented: hypothesis-testing, hypothesisbuilding, descriptive experiment, survey, or case study. case study 4: the influence of a retailer’s distribution strategy on a retailer’s sensitivity to urban time access windows (by hans quak). we first discuss “how to do” such a case study. that designing and conducting a case study with a theory-building (“exploratory”) aim is often not useful because (a) it is usually more important for the development of a theory that already formulated propositions are tested (and that such tests are replicated). and martijn put provided us with helpful feedback after applying our case study methodology in their master’s thesis research. references appendices 1: measurement 2: business journals that publish case studies 3: flowcharts 4: writing a case study research report 5: glossary index 238 238 238 239 239 239 239 240 240 241 244 245 245 248 249 249 249 250 250 250 250 251 251 251 252 253 253 265 267 276 278 293. we want to find out how common the case study is in business research and in which scientific journals case studies are published and to describe the types of case studies that were published in a variety of business research areas in the period 2000–2005. if these are not valid in terms of the researcher’s definition. we were unable to select publications on case study research directly from the isi databases. it is clearly accepted that case study research in management can be rigorous. in this type of case study the principles of a good survey are followed as closely as possible (“quasi-survey case study”)..Number of case study publications in scholarly journals in proquest database. for example case study research has consistently been one of the most powerful methods in operations management. irrespective of the research strategy by which they are tested. case study 7: building a model of best practice of company standardization (by henk de vries and florens slob). the general objective of the research can be formulated as follows:The general objective of this study is to contribute to the knowledge of practitioner p {specify the practitioner by mentioning a name and by referring to the real life context in which this practitioner acts or must act}. following hypothesis: “in high quality business research journals published by the american academy of management. the researcher might interpret the rejection of a hypothesis as evidence that the proposition could not be correct at all. make use of many different kinds of standards in order to improve their business performance in terms of efficiency and quality. hypothesis-testing practice-oriented comparative case study (page 218) a hypothesis-testing practice-oriented comparative case study is a case study in which a deterministic or probabilistic hypothesis is tested in a small population or in a sample from a population in a practice.. so there was no instance of replication in this study. the empirical cycle for developing theory by formulating and testing propositions about an object of study. (2002) state that many case study research papers indeed lack a discussion of fundamental aspects.. this means that theory-building research always needs to be followed by testing in another instance of the object of study (or in other groups or populations). speculations regarding the consequences of the results for practice (for theory-oriented research) or speculations regarding the consequences of the results for theory (for practiceoriented research) report that includes at least the sections: introduction. despite the widespread belief that case study research is not an appropriate research strategy for theory-testing.

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The Case Study as a Research Method

-oriented research: implications for theory practice-oriented research: implications for practice theory-oriented research: towards experts practice-oriented research: towards practitioners. of the 235 remaining theory-oriented case study publications only 23 are presented as theory-testing studies. and references to relevant chapters in this book 14 number of publications with case study research in all scholarly journals in proquest and in isi journals in the period 2000–2005 21 three types of case studies in five fields of business research (2000–2005) 23 correspondence between theoretical terms and theory-oriented research terms 66 preferred research strategies for testing different types of propositions 77 radical innovation projects 108 incremental innovation projects 110 six types of innovation that change a product’s components and interfaces 120 typology of ideal organizational configurations for product innovation success 122 data for 15 successful product innovation projects 128 number of selected cases by product innovation type 132 main case characteristics 147 scenarios of time access window pressure 148 vehicle types sorted on capacity 164 distribution strategy dimensions per case 166. speculation about the possible contribution to practice (for theory-oriented research) or to theory (for practice-oriented research). informedcareerpersonal growthfiction & biographieshealth & fitnesslifestyleculturebrowse bybooksaudiobooksnews & magazinessheet musicuploadsign injoindul & hak - case case study methodology in business researchuploaded by johan mark berendscase studytheorydata analysishypothesisproposition0. therefore the third-best strategy was chosen in the comparative case study. probability sampling in such a small population is much easier and the population could even be so small that all instances of the population could be included in the study (census). a “least likely” case is an instance of the object of study in which support for the proposition is not likely. of study (page 35) an object of study is the stable characteristic of a theory or practice. the theory-building case study begins with a conceptual model with an unknown concept (as in figures 8. assumed relations apply only to the local context of the research. internal validity (page 181) internal validity is the extent to which the outcome of an analysis is justified by the scores obtained in the study. each reader will have similar practical problems that could be addressed with a “flash case study”. or the same population of instances for survey research) can address this problem. how to test a deterministic relation with a case study. the review shows that the international journal of operations & production management is the one most important channel by which case study research is published. process of conducting practice-oriented descriptive research is shown in flowchart 3c. while many authors advocate the use of case study research for either exploratory purposes or theory-testing. case studies enable students to analyse business issues from a variety of perspectives and apply critical thinking and problem solving skills that they have been developing in their classes. study 2 does not give detailed descriptions of the different projects (such as provided in case study 1). difference between the experiment and the case study is that the experiment manipulates instances. longitudinal case study (page 139) a longitudinal case study is a single case study in which scores are obtained at two or more points in time. the researcher has decided after a successful exploration that hypothesis-building research is needed. we will discuss in detail how to design and conduct a theory-testing case study in chapters 5–7. case study research is not an excuse for “industrial tourism” – visiting lots of organizations without any preconceived ideas as to what is being researched. how could we make a reasoned choice for one specific research strategy? closing the gap: a polemic on plant-based research in operations management. became a comparative descriptive case study of the standardization procedures in the six companies that had requested it. we made that claim on the basis of the assumption that usually a whole set of rudimentary theories about the object of study already exists in the minds and talk of practitioners. because it would require that local governments would vary time window pressure for the purpose of this research (which is not possible in practice).. a literature review will describe what is considered to be “known” about the object of study and what is not yet known. the phrase "case study" in conjunction with keywords or terms from company, subject, industry or region pull-down menus. for getting ideas on the outline of the research report.. after each example of a case study we add a “methodological reflection” in which we discuss the contingencies with which the study in the example had to deal. researchers in the field of purchasing seem to have failed to acknowledge this characterizing aspect of continuous interaction. can sometimes find relevant material in google books by searching with the phrase "case study" or "case studies" and a keyword. this book sets out structures and guidelines that will assist researchers from a wide range of disciplines to develop rigorous use of case studies in research. this object of study is the characteristic of the theory that is “stable” – other characteristics are not stable: the values of the concepts vary (hence “variables” when operationalized in a specific study). or a single case study in which evidence confirms the hypothesis. in the longitudinal single case study the independent concept in the single case changes “naturally” with time. an experiment is a study in which one or more variable characteristics of an object of study are manipulated in one or multiple (“experimental”) instances of an object of study and in which scores obtained in the experimental instance or instances are analysed. the case study protocol (in which it was specified how the study would be conducted. case study research (page 3) case study research (or “the case study”) is research in which (a) one case (single case study) or a small number of cases (comparative case study) in their real life context are selected. we argue that the experiment is the preferred research strategy for testing all types of proposition..2) can illustrate the advantage of the parallel single case study. how to test a probabilistic relation with a case study. the term proposition is used in the context of theory and the term hypothesis in the context of an empirical study..We therefore propose a replication strategy to study innovation projects that are different from the ones studied here. if this exploration has been successful and has resulted in the formulation of one or more additional hypotheses (or in the belief that the current hypothesis is worth testing) hypothesis-testing research should be designed and conducted. case study 2 originally stated that the theory did not set any restriction regarding the domain of product innovation projects to which the theory was assumed to be applicable.. to select one or more of these propositions for being tested in the study. the researcher has scores that indicate a value of a variable (here “success”) for each instance of the object of study (here “a project”). tc statement 2: successful design (and installation) of enabling it guarantees the effectiveness of business process redesign (and the effectiveness of the implementation of redesigned business processes). the theory of case study 2 presumed interrelations between organizational dimensions, and therefore had claims that might have been more difficult to prove. one should reflect about what one wants to achieve with the research project (e..Cause (pages 36–37) a cause is a variable characteristic a of an object of study of which the value (or its change) permits. candidate population (page 46) a candidate population is a member of a set of populations from which the researcher will select a population for a survey or a quasi survey. especially when the boundaries between object of study and context are not clearly evident..Number of publications with case study research in all scholarly journals in proquest and in isi journals in the period 2000–2005. case study 3: the influences of urban time access windows on retailers’ distribution costs (by hans quak). the concepts and their operationalization into variables were precisely defined similar to the definitions in case study 3. due to our research methods we could not show the possible correctness of the proposition.’s (2003: 13–14) definition is an example of such an all-inclusive descriptive definition: “a case study is an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context. could make use of the same data that we used in the study reported in case study 3. this mismatch between our emphasis in this book on the theory-testing case study and the rare occurrence of such studies in current research practice does not reflect our misunderstanding of current research practice. a valid way of extracting evidence of the financial success of a project consists of: i i i i precisely defining what the researcher considers to be the financial success of a project. no major deviations were found between the assessment of the researcher based on the interview data and the assessment of the project manager in the questionnaire. research for empirical researchview moredul & hak - case case study methodology in business research. in chapter 10 “practice-oriented research (general)” we give more information on these three types of research. there are two main differences between practice-oriented and theory-oriented case study research. then the research is practice-oriented and should be designed as such. relatively few publications on case study research have been published. it is useful to contact again an expert in the theory to discuss the results of this exploration and to decide which of the resulting propositions should be tested in order to make the study a relevant contribution to development of the theory. it makes sense to keep the theory-building study as simple and cheap (in terms of time and costs) as possible. result of these two procedures is a score that represents the value of a concept in the observed instance of the object of study (see appendix 1 “measurement” for a further discussion). chapter can be summarized by the following list of four types of theory-building research: specifying a relation between two known concepts – proposition-building by an experiment. if a researcher develops a theory of critical success factors of innovation projects. a comparative case study is a study in which (a) a small number of cases in their real life context are selected and (b) scores obtained from these cases are analysed in a qualitative manner.. this chapter discusses how to design and conduct a case study in which a deterministic relation is tested.. introduction to the special issue: case study and field research. domain representativeness is the degree of similarity between the distribution of the values of the variables in an instance of an object of study (or a group of instances or a population) and their distribution. the result of this study consisted of a description of the standardization processes in each company and an evaluation against criteria that were developed in this study. on this last observation, we would suggest replicating the study and testing the present proposition for the domain of physical products, and then trying to extend the domain into other types of products. the proposition that we want to test in this study is the following. 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Dul & Hak - Case Case Study Methodology in Business Research

object of study to which our theory applies is product innovation projects. this allows a researcher to claim that a proposition has been tested in a named population (such as. the newly formulated propositions should be tested in a new study.. through conducting research in the field and being exposed to real problems. then the researcher must have a procedure for generating the evaluation from the text. as in case study 3, the domain of the theory included all large retailers that distribute goods from a distribution centre to shops that are (at least partly) located in shopping areas in cities in which time access windows could be installed. we consider it essential to good theory-building research (in comparison to mere exploration) that the emerging proposition is proven to be true in the instances of the object of study that are selected for the study. (2002) describe a number of weaknesses that they believe are common in case study research papers. the researcher may then want to select a “most likely case” to find parts in the domain where the proposition could be supported. the aim of practice-oriented hypothesis-testing research is not to prove or to test. on the objective of the research a “most likely” or a “least likely” case can be selected. presuming that the exploration at the beginning of the research was conducted seriously and that. a longitudinal case study it must be determined how many measurements of the two variables have to be conducted and on which moments within the longitudinal time frame. appear mainly in core operations management and operations research journals. and replications in experimental research can be conducted relatively efficiently once the infrastructure and preparations for an experimental setting have been established.. if the researcher wants to define a concept that has not been “discovered” in theory-building research. by not including non-successful companies or nations in his study. this attempt to select a “representative” sample of cases also shows that the study was designed as a parallel case study. the object of measurement is usually not the same as the object of study (which is projects in this example) but rather an element belonging to the object of study or something to which it is connected. this means that the comparative case study is the preferred research strategy. the way in which the case study is designed and conducted is the same in testing both types of conditions. discovering concepts principles of theory-building research research strategies in theory-building research outcome and implications summary 178 179 180 180 181 183 183.. equally important criteria for the quality of theory-building research as they are in any other type of research. the idea of practice-oriented research is based on the assumption that practitioners can make use of knowledge about their practice.. after a discussion (in chapter 10) on practice-oriented research in general. to check the measurement validity of our ratings, we compared the researcher’s ratings of ownership integration and task integration with the ratings by the project manager for these dimensions. in theory-oriented research we collect and analyse data about multiple interventions (with and without the feature) in order to establish the correctness of the proposition. the survey establishes the statistical relation between the independent and the dependent concepts in a population of instances of the object of study. we make a distinction between practice-oriented research and theory-oriented research. objective of the research was to test a set of new propositions. the definition of the concept should be “grounded” in the data collected in the study. in addition there is confusion in the minds of many as to what exactly is case study research: is it about practice or theory. articles on case study research show that many case studies suffer from a lack of scientific rigour. the assumption underlying most theory-building (or “exploratory”) research is that “nothing is known yet” about the relevant aspects of the object of study.. we think that exploration is a much more efficient and effective way to find or formulate propositions than “discovering” new propositions through “exploratory” or “theory-building” research. it specifies either a proposition that should be further tested (and why this one) or a proposition that should be tested for the first time (and why this one) or an aspect of the object of study about which a new proposition should be built (and why).. in this chapter we first discuss the main differences between theoryoriented and practice-oriented research. & production management and international journal of production research as the most common outlets.” i practical decision: there is no need to describe the difference between hypothesis and proposition as a new idea for business research. evidence that is recorded and is stored in the researcher’s office is called “data”. members of the business community are the primary users of these research outcomes. the propositions of a theory formulate causal relations between the variable characteristics (concepts) of the object of study.. and discuss general features of research objectives for each of these two types.. one instance of the object of study (a case) in which effect b is present is selected. focusing on businesses with high growth potential and strong management. case study 1: testing a theory of collaboration characteristics of successful innovation projects (by koen dittrich). this study we consider six types of innovation to components of a larger product (e. study 6 correctly made a distinction between (a) the results of the study and (b) what practitioners could do with these results. results section (written in present tense) describes the results of the research without further interpretation and discussion: i i summary of results of the measurement. we first discuss “how to do” such a case study.. the scientific literature is replete with reports of outcomes of initial theory-testing research: single studies in which a hypothesis is formulated. on the basis of this finding he formulated goertz’s first law: “for any research area one can find important necessary hypotheses” (2003: 66). (2003: 47–48) clearly explains the difference between replication logic (which he applies to results of the case study and of experiments) and sampling logic (which he applies to procedures within a survey). format of this research objective is similar to the format of theorybuilding research aimed at the discovery of concepts (discussed in 8. before making the decision to conduct a practice-oriented or a theory-oriented study. this is the reason why one always needs to look first for deterministic relations in theory-building research. with theory-building research we mean research that is explicitly designed to gather empirical evidence for the formulation of propositions. the best advice for the number of instances that should be included in the study. study 3 concludes that the two hypotheses were confirmed in all cases. tells us whether the hypothesis is true for this practice (if the test is conducted in a case or cases from within that practice) or for very similar situations (if the test is conducted in a case or cases that are very similar to the practice situation to which the study is oriented). but whether a hypothesis is correct for the practice for which the study wants to be locally relevant. of a research proposallecture 05classresearch processresearch problemppnckh2011-part2take home concept of research and importancelecture 31st quiz from 1 to 12 lecture repeated mcqs are ignorea_caseyin k robert 2mbaa_517_syllabusprl 605project thesis guidelines 2012guide to learning with casesdocuments about case studyskip carouselhandbook on impact evaluationintranet strategy and governancegovernance of technical education in indiacase studymalawi case study plan swedensocial networking for the legal professionut dallas syllabus for mkt6220. universe of instances of the object of study to which the theory is applicable consists of all distribution activities of all (large) retailers in western europe with shops that are (at least partly) located in shopping areas in cities in which time access windows could be installed. the case study methodology for testing a sufficient condition is in almost all respects the same as for testing a necessary condition. in theory-testing research two types of research can be distinguished: (a) initial theory-testing. think that it is important to define what is distinctive in theory-building research. but rather our deliberate attempt to correct what we see as an under-representation and underutilization of the case study as an appropriate research strategy for theory-testing. using a positivist case research methodology to test three competing theories-in-use of business process redesign. the one important difference between hypothesis-building research and theory-building research concerns. other researchers have investigated the use of case study research in a specific field. case study 2 suggests that a more thorough literature study is needed to find which results could be confronted with the present findings. the danger of the parallel case study can be illustrated with the results of testing propositions 1a and 3a with respect to radical innovation projects (see table 5.) ferdinand jaspers received an msc degree in business administration from rsm erasmus university. if such replications make use of the same research strategy (experiment. his research and teaching concern standardization from a business point of view. in point: best cases from the 2005 international conference on case study teaching and learning edited by marie wilson. exploration of practice (page 49) exploration of practice is collecting and evaluating relevant information for theory (in theory-oriented research) or for practice (in practice-oriented research) by identifying and evaluating relevant practice literature. depicts the variation of the actual values of the concepts of the object of study. the e-book covers all stages of writing a dissertation starting from the selection of the research area to submitting the completed version of the work before the deadline. this is true in the sense that the aim of theory development is to build correct statements about the object of study and that. “exploration for theory-oriented research” how this specification could be achieved through an exploration of theory followed by an exploration of practice (see flowchart 2). the longitudinal single case study or the comparative case study is the second-best strategy. objective of this research is to contribute to the theory about the relation between collaboration characteristics of incremental and radical innovation projects and the success of these projects, by testing the following new propositions. result of this case selection procedure was that this study was partly a single case study (namely for projects aiming at products with incremental core component change as well as for projects aiming at architectural innovation of core or peripheral components).

The use of the case study method in theory testing: the example of

-testing research is testing a proposition of a theory by confirming or rejecting a hypothesis that is derived from that proposition in an instance of the object of study (or in a group of instances or a population).. most studies are formulated as exploratory: building theory by exploring instances of the object of study. the researcher should put more energy into identifying and selecting a case that is less “typical” in order to increase the likelihood of a rejection of the proposition and (which boils down to the same) to try to get a sense of the boundaries of the domain to which the proposition applies. how to test a deterministic relation with a case study 6. objective of the present study is to contribute to the theory about the relationship between distribution strategy and the retailers’ sensitivity to time access windows by testing the propositions 1–5. his research focuses on the integration of supply and innovation processes. the result of a successful hypothesis-building study is a hypothesis. note that the single case study cannot be used as a strategy for confirming a hypothesis. advanced search and combine the phrase "case study" with your keyword(s). how to test a deterministic relation with a case study. a longitudinal case study of new product development in this firm in which the independent variable varies in time in the real life context. another possibility is that the proposition could be still correct, but that the results from this study could be influenced by measurement problems (option 3). practice-oriented research (page 30) practice-oriented research is research of which the objective is to contribute to the knowledge of one or more specified practitioners. future research needs based on the outcome of the research (for theory-oriented research. because it would require that retail chains would vary their distribution strategy for the purpose of this research (which is not possible in practice). if we use the term “practice” as in “practice-oriented research” and in “exploration of practice”..It also publishes many articles on case study research on the interface of strategy and operations.. we argue that the case study is actually the preferred research strategy for the testing of specific types of proposition. how to test a deterministic relation with a case study. various business representatives are involved in the role of internal customer. in marketing and in finance the relative contribution of case study research is lower (3–6 per cent).) the different types of contribution to a practice that practice-oriented research can make. and the researcher wants to know what the boundaries of the domain are. even though the study was adequately conducted and the reported conclusion regarding the hypothesis was correct.. be seen as predictions of what will happen in instances of the object of study under certain circumstances. his current research extends these themes to business process outsourcing (http://www. for a single case study only one single instance of the object of study must be selected from the domain to which the theory is assumed to apply. well-defined topic clear choice between practice-oriented and theory-oriented research objective research objective is specific. the measurement methods that are usually associated with case studies (such as the “qualitative” interview and the use of “multiple sources of evidence”) could also be used in other research strategies. the term proposition is used in the context of theory and the term hypothesis in the context of an empirical study. object of study in this case study is product innovation projects. of which some might not count as a “real” delivery time according to the researcher’s definition. concepts of interest in this study are:Type of product innovation. propositions about the kind of company representatives involved in communication with providers of business services1..Although the research process is depicted here as a sequence of consecutive steps. the hypothesis would predict that in a group of innovation projects selected for the study. the alleged lack of “generalizability” of the case study is a misunderstanding. a note on “pragmatic determinism” 72 how the survey can become a case study 83 more complex conceptual models 85 an example of a theory-testing single case study 97 michael porter’s case selection 186 building a theory on successfully helping city government 196 other propositions that can be derived from table 9. the general research objective for such research can be formulated as follows:The objective of this study is to contribute to the knowledge regarding problem p {specify here the problem and its phase in the intervention cycle} by identifying and describing the following variable(s):{specify variable v1} {specify variable v2} {… etc. a theory could also be a new combination of (parts of ) extant theory and empirical knowledge published in the scientific literature that is constructed by the researcher in the preparation of a study. the exception to this rule is the situation in which the hypothesis was built by studying the entire practice to which the research is oriented (e.. we define practice-oriented research as research that is aimed at contributing to the knowledge of specific practitioners responsible for a specific practice. theory development (page 38) theory development is the process of improving a theory by (a) formulating new propositions (through exploration or theory-building research). the contribution of exploratory case study research to theory-building is well documented. the preferred research strategy for testing necessary conditions is the experiment.-oriented research is (only) useful if it delivers the knowledge that a practitioner can actually use in his actual situation and. external validity (page 47) external validity is the extent to which the outcome of a study in one instance or in a group of instances applies (or can be generalized) to instances other than those in the study.. we discuss in detail the different types of theorytesting case studies: first we describe how to design and conduct a case study for testing a sufficient or necessary condition (chapter 5). domain representativeness (page 45) domain representativeness is the degree of similarity between the distribution of the values of the variables in an instance of an object of study (or a group of instances or a population) and their distribution in the theoretical domain. case studies are usually summaries of real-life business scenarios or fictitious accounts of a business situation or dilemma. this of course begs the questions of how rigorously case studies are done in business research. participating in situations in which the object of study occurs.. if it is assumed that in a serial case study. objective of theory-building research is to contribute to the development of theory by formulating new propositions based on the evidence drawn from observation of instances of the object of study. given the fact that the knowledge base in business studies mainly consists of propositions that have been tested only once and have not been put to replication tests. case study 2: testing a theory of ideal typical organizational configurations for successful product innovations (by ferdinand jaspers and jan van den ende). the preferred research strategy for testing necessary conditions is the experiment. difference between practice-oriented and theory-oriented research can be illustrated with the difference between management practice and management theory. porter’s theory on the competitive advantage of nations (1990) is based on case study research. because the design of the experiments and single case studies for testing a hypothesis that expresses a sufficient condition is almost identical to the design of the research for testing a hypothesis that expresses a necessary condition (as discussed in chapter 5). the usual research strategy in descriptive practice-oriented research can be characterized as a comparative case study. a theory is a theory if it can be expressed explicitly in terms of these four characteristics:Object of study. he is associate professor of research methodology at rsm erasmus university. this theory-building case study we found that buying companies distinguish between different types of services and organize their activities accordingly. we recommend that everyone who is at the beginning of a research project but. if the proposition is not supported in a number of instances, and researchers think that the proposition itself is correct, though only for a more limited domain, then a replication in “most likely” cases is recommended. Dul & Hak - Case Case Study Methodology in Business Research. we also express thanks to several researchers for their comments on draft versions of our book: floortje blindenbach. how to test a sufficient or a necessary condition with a case study 5.. basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. order to check whether replication theory-testing research is appropriate the following questions could be raised: do relevant persons (usually experts. a researcher might be tempted to shortcut the measurement process. applies to the first case in a serial case study. the general format of the research objective of theoryoriented research was formulated as follows (see 3. it was mentioned in the methodological reflection with case study 3 (in 6. our study focuses specifically on the ongoing interaction between the buying and providing companies after the purchase decision (i. the survey is the second-best research strategy for testing a probabilistic relation. the study might have been flawed and the reported conclusion regarding the hypothesis (rejection or confirmation) might be erroneous. a study of the available scientific and professional literature on the process of designing company standards confirmed the expectation that criteria for a good quality process were not available. survey research is a good alternative for testing a probabilistic relation and case study research is a good alternative for testing deterministic conditions or relations. main difference between the case study and the experiment 5 main differences between the case study and the survey 6 suggestions for reading specific topics 11 suggestions for students to design and conduct a research project 12 a stepwise approach for research: activities..Survey research (page 5) survey research (or “the survey”) is research in which (a) a single population in the real life context is selected. then the hypothesis in a longitudinal case study can be formulated as follows:Hypothesis: for each pair of measurement points in time. hypothesis-building practice-oriented comparative case study (page 222) a hypothesis-building practice-oriented comparative case study is a case study in which one or more hypotheses are built on the basis of a comparison between scores obtained from a small number of instances.

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Business case studies | The University of Auckland - Libraries and

it is helpful to think about different possible outcomes of a theoryoriented or practice-oriented study.) that such sampling was not realistic for the current study. aims of exploration for practice-oriented research are:To specify the problem as precisely as possible. there is no specific “method” for how candidate concepts should be found in a theory-building case study. this phase of the research process can be concluded with a description of the current body of knowledge. carrying out your search select case study from the document type box. theory-oriented research theory-oriented research is research where the objective is to contribute to theory development. research (page 30) research is building and testing statements about an object of study or practice by analysing evidence drawn from observation.. the same kind of reasoning as applied here to the measurement of concepts (which are discovered and described in the study itself) applies to the type of relations between concepts that is discovered in the study. research objective (page 30) a research objective is a specification of the aim of a study.. but in general we advise selection of an appropriate research strategy in the following way: 1. this result is “true” for the practice if the entire practice to which the research is oriented was studied. the browse subjects tool and then select business and business case studies. research strategy (page 6) a research strategy is a category of procedures for selecting one or more instances of an object of study and for data analysis.. such selection strategy can be used when the proposition is tested for the first time (“initial theory-testing research”). in order to find knowledge regarding “the possible implementation strategies available for this type of design” the researcher needs (a) to identify different situations in which similar designs have been implemented. university of auckland business school uses the american psychological association's apa 6th style. variable (page 35) a variable is a measurable indicator of a concept in research. determine the specific research objective and specific type of research. single case study (page 45) a parallel single case study is case study research that is designed according to a parallel replication strategy. the general objective of the research can be formulated as follows (see 3. the definition of innovation projects used to build the database is the same as was used in this case study. we prefer the term “serial” instead of “multiple” (as in “multiple case study”) because it makes explicit that every single replication can best be seen as a next test in a series of replications. a major difficulty for students and novice case study researchers is that proponents of these different perspectives give different meanings to similar methodological terms without clearly defining these meanings. in case study 2 four organizational dimensions were combined into a single ideal typical configuration for each innovation type. although strictly speaking a sufficient condition cannot be confirmed in a single case study. dubé and paré (2003) list 53 quality criteria that they applied to published case study papers in management information systems (mis). business strategy: a new zealand perspective by michèle akoorie & joanna scott-kennel.. or descriptive) has been formulated and subsequently it has been decided that a practice-oriented case study will be designed and conducted. the significance of a test result for the theory in a case study must always be assessed by means of replications in other. aim of this chapter is to provide a background to this book’s approach to case study research. real life context (page 4) real life context is the object of study as it occurs (or has occurred) in reality. dependent concept (page 36) a dependent concept is a variable characteristic b of an object of study of which the value (or its change) is the result of.. means that practice-oriented research is finished if the specific knowledge need of the practitioner is satisfied. his current research focuses on production planning problems (http://www. the advantage of using this database was that it is not only a (partial) list of instances of the object of study (from which cases can be selected) but also contains the data that are needed for the testing. universe of instances of the object of study to which our theory is applicable consists of all distribution activities of all (large) retailers that are (at least partly) located in shopping areas in cities in which time access windows could be installed. visiting places where the object of study occurs and observing it. a serial single case study is case study research with a replication strategy in which each test takes into account the outcome of previous tests. if the decision was made to do a case study. the main objectives of this research project were (1) to design a “best practice” for company standardization that could be implemented in the six companies participating in the project. the only journal with more than five case study research publications was industrial marketing management. we argue that generalizability is not a characteristic of the results of a study. this implies that the validity of the conclusions of this study depends on the quality of this input. it must first be tested in a (next) hypothesis-testing study. observed pattern (page 95) an observed pattern is the score or the combination of scores obtained in a study. the researchers would be forced to decide whether the value is h or l. including mason’s book qualitative researching (chapter 4) for guidelines on how to develop valid questions for qualitative interviews. and a phd degree in business administration at erasmus university. if a quasi-survey comparative case study is conducted because of limitations caused by intensive measurement procedures. irrespective of how it has been generated (although the researcher might be interested in the company’s procedures and might want to try to collect evidence on these procedures as well). if it can predict in which organizations the intervention will be successful and why) but the success of this particular theory-oriented research project would not be evaluated in terms of its contribution to the specific organization. limitation to research in business and management also enabled us to make good use of examples of case study research in our research school. study (page 30) a study is a research project in which a research objective is formulated and achieved. after a research topic has been identified (step 1 in flowchart 1. in both situations the researcher needs to know where to go in order to be able to conduct the measurement.. we thought that we should limit this theory-building study only to instances in which the buying companies are experienced buyers of services and are generally successful in these purchases.-oriented research aims at contributing to the development of a theory. case selection (page 92) case selection is selecting one case or a small number of cases from a set of candidate cases for a case study. mccutcheon and meredith (1993) give a basic introduction to the methodology of case study research in which they focus on case study research for exploration. these company representatives might have been able to generate versions of the propositions that have been built in this study. the researcher needs rather to explore a range of situations in which it can be expected that the variable that. the results were presented to the steering group and to the dutch academic network of researchers in standardization and certification. descriptive research (page 224) descriptive research is a type of practice-oriented research of which the objective is to contribute to a practitioner’s knowledge by identifying and describing not yet known variable characteristics of the object of study. we observe that there are substantially more publications in isi journals using case research on the subjects of strategy. our definition of the case study reflects our idea that the survey and the case study are different in two aspects. the preceding chapters we discussed how to design and conduct a case study that tests a proposition with a sufficient condition or a necessary condition. the criterion for success of practice-oriented research is thus whether an empirically correct conclusion about a practical object of study is reached (such as the conclusion that a specific outcome has been achieved).. the research objective of such a theory-building study can be further specified as follows:The objective of this study is to contribute to the development of theory regarding topic t {specify the object of study} by discovering and explaining a phenomenon of interest {specify the phenomenon}. formulation of concepts or rejection/ confirmation of hypothesis (for practice-oriented research). the harvard business review publishes a case study article (usually fictional) in each issue. it is assumed that every causal relation that is of interest to business research is multi-causal or multi-factorial and. if the topic of the research is “critical success factors of innovation projects” then a proposition regarding innovation projects could be that “factor a results in success b” where a may be top management commitment and b is successful financial performance. we define the domain of the theory (represented by the rectangle in the picture below) as the universe of all possible instances (represented by the symbol x) of the object of study to which the theory applies.. case selection in hypothesis-building research is confined to the boundaries of the practice to which the research is oriented or to the domain of similar practices. which depicts the preferred research strategies for testing the different types of propositions..1 how to test a sufficient or a necessary condition with a case study. principles of selection of instances are the same in practice-oriented research and in theory-oriented research. also meredith (2002) noted that case study methodology is often not well understood and not applied rigorously. the researcher must now decide whether these numbers indicate financial success or not. study 4 concluded with a proposal for new theory-testing research aimed at testing the newly formulated proposition. we use the term hypothesis in the context of a study.. we define a proposition as a part of a theory and a hypothesis as a part of a study. theory-building study might also start from the (probably quite rare) situation in which there is no known concept (see figure 8.

Recommendations for using the case study method in international

these areas were chosen to provide a general picture of some main research streams within business research. “exploration for theory-oriented research” how this specification could be achieved through an exploration of theory followed by an exploration of practice (see flowchart 2). in addition:University of auckland new zealand business case collection. practice-oriented objective of this research was to contribute to the improvement of the company standardization procedures of six companies by designing a best practice that was acceptable to each of them. how to test a probabilistic relation with a case study 7. is derived from observations about the three instances in this study of purchases with a low perceived risk. propose that any theory-oriented research starts with an exploration of theory and practice to find out whether or not a proposition regarding the research topic of interest is available. study methodology in business research by jan dul & tony hak. but actually this is a quite common situation in academic research. sometimes researchers or students might be free to choose the one or the other research objective. 37 scientific realism 41 replication of survey results 44 multiple case study 45 domain. the assumed relationship between a and b needs to be specified precisely in the proposition before we can determine which research strategy fits best. study’s objective was to test five new propositions about the effect of five dimensions of distribution strategy on the retailer’s sensitivity to time access windows. the next preferred strategy for testing the deterministic hypotheses would be a case study. after a hypothesis is confirmed or rejected in one study (“oneshot”).. supply chain management research using case studies: a literature analysis. but we considered papers related to a specific subject in all business journals. “general research objectives of theory-oriented and practiceoriented research”):The general objective of this study is to contribute to the development of theory regarding topic t {specify the research topic}. based on the literature, they formulated statements for each of these three theories in which their core beliefs regarding effective business process redesign are expressed:Tc statement 1: effective business process redesign can occur only if the redesigning is it-driven. for example between depth of the research and progress of the project. expert (page 33) an expert is a person with specialized knowledge about a theory and its object of study.. determine the specific research objective and specific type of research..Population (page 46) a population is a set of instances of an object of study defined by one or a small number of criteria. in contrast, we considered explicit limitations to the scope of the collaboration (such as confining the collaboration only to joint research or only the development of new technology or products), or to the duration of the project as indications of low(er) commitment. it was an appropriate decision to include all six companies in this study. to case studies in books and to case studies published by the university of auckland business school case centre. how to test a probabilistic relation with a case study. a case study in which data from one instance is enough to achieve the research objective.. selecting a research topic is not discussed in this book). his research focuses on the organization and management of product and service development processes. the study was designed as a parallel longitudinal case study. the single case study is the second-best strategy for testing a sufficient. academic theories in business and management in fact express deterministic conditions and relations. st statement 1: effective redesign of processes can be accomplished only if an understanding of both the it and the business processes within the social context is used during redesign. i a description of aspects of the object of study about which no proposition has yet been formulated. of case study method include data collection and analysis within the context of phenomenon, integration of qualitative and quantitative data in data analysis, and the ability to capture complexities of real-life situations so that the phenomenon can be studied in greater levels of depth. case study 2 was a combined single case study and parallel case study (see below under “case selection” for explanation). following (invented) example of a data matrix generated in a theory-building study of factors that determine the success of innovation projects. how to test a probabilistic relation with a case study. the preceding chapters we discussed how to design and conduct a case study that tests a proposition with a sufficient condition. with our research we wanted to contribute to the strategy of a leading european firm that develops. how to test a deterministic relation with a case study. example: “impact of increasing levels of multiculturalism on marketing practices: a case study of mcdonald’s indonesia”.. because the authors of this study had built contacts with a large network of purchasing managers in the netherlands. and visiting as well as participating in real life situations in which an object of study occurs. of the research topic choice of the general research objective specification of the research objective by specifying the propositions (for theory-oriented research) or hypotheses or variables (for practice-oriented research). in case study 1 three different propositions, one for each relevant dimension, were proposed. technological capabilities are determined based on the line of business that firms are in. and trade literature regarding (or related to) the object of study. in the case study strategy it is as important that concepts are measured validly and reliably as it is in other research strategies. choose the research strategy i specification of the hypothesis: (a) in research papers in the academy of management review (amr). this type of research can be initial theorytesting if the proposition has never been tested before or replication if the proposition was tested before. number of journals in business research have published articles in which the methodology of case study research is discussed and. define general research objective (see flowchart 3) i we wanted to do a quick practice-oriented case study to find out if the distinction that we make between the terms hypothesis and proposition is accepted in the field of business research.. in practice it is an iterative process that often requires stepping back to previous phases of the research process. these can be located in the database by combining harvard business review in the publication name field with case studies in the subject terms field. on the other hand there is strong resistance to case study research in some communities and its use has been rather narrow. we identified 18 publications on case studies in harvard business review.. we needed to look into a number of instances (“cases”) of ongoing interaction between buyers and providers of business services. exploratory case study data collection method is often accompanied by additional data collection method(s) such as interviews, questionnaires, experiments etc.. it has been decided that a theory-building case study needs to be designed and conducted. effect (page 36) an effect is a variable characteristic b of an object of study of which the value (or its change) is the result of. & Hak - Case Case Study Methodology in Business Research - Ebook download as PDF File (. on: limitations of the study due to methodological and practical choices. publications on experimental research often present the results of a series of experiments that replicate one another. the alleged lack of “generalizability” of the case study has its origin in confusion about these two issues as well as in confusion about what it is that is generalized (the study. criterion for measurement validity of this instrument is whether every detail of its procedures can be justified in terms of the researcher’s definition of financial success. each example is followed by a “methodological reflection” in which the case study is discussed in detail and evaluated. a case study that requires data from two or more instances to achieve the research objective. building propositions about the kind of company representatives involved in communication with providers of business services wendy van der valk and finn wynstra 9. it is important that case study research is conducted well. general objective of this study is to contribute to the development of theory regarding topic t {specify the research topic}. a replication strategy must be formulated in accordance with the researcher’s answers to such questions as listed above regarding the outcome of the previous test. for the achievement of the potential of case study research it is important that it is done with rigour.. it is not possible to give specific advice on the number of cases that must be selected for testing a probabilistic relation with a quasi-survey comparative case study.. define the general research objective and general type of research. the clearest examples of such misunderstandings are occasions in which practiceoriented research is criticized for lacking “generalizability” (which usually is not a relevant criterion in such cases) and occasions in which practical conclusions are inferred from a first test of an interesting theoretical proposition (which cannot be considered robust and generalizable before it is tested in a series of replication studies). we realize that our thinking on case study methodology in business research was shaped not only by our own experience as researcher and teacher. the general line of thought is first to select the minimum number of cases that is enough for doing the study.. the outcome of the research contributes to the practitioner’s knowledge. it is important to note that the results of this study were based on data generated by the two simulation models and that. study 7 is oriented to the practice of company standardization in six big dutch chemical and petrochemical companies. how to test a sufficient or a necessary condition with a case study. we distinguish two main types of case study: the single case study.

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Case Studies - Research Methodology

research methods for the empirical investigation of the process of formation of operations strategy. it might not be feasible to measure the value of the relevant concept at this stage of the research. in the context of practice-oriented research we use the word hypothesis rather than proposition because this research does not aim at contributing to theory (see box 7 in 3. they provide suggestions for designing and conducting the research itself but also for writing the research paper. the generated hypothesis can be considered true for the practice to which the study is oriented. these main differences between the case study and the survey are summarized in table 1.-oriented research practice-oriented research is research where the objective is to contribute to the knowledge of one or more specified practitioners. this implies that the result of a theory-building study is not only one or more new propositions but also an initial test of them within the study.-testing research is one of the types of theory-oriented research. are publishers, such as harvard business school press, which produce and sell cases for teaching and learning purposes. they make clear the differences between the varying uses of case studies including the difference between practiceoriented and theory-oriented research. when the researcher wants to test a hypothesis regarding the success factors of the innovation projects of a specific company. the concept (success) is an element of one object of study (projects). in flowchart 1 (all flowcharts are presented additionally in appendix 3) we present a stepwise approach for the process of designing and conducting research in general. both conclusions are the result of theory-building through a comparative case study. the researcher needs to find these texts and “read” them. his research interests include the organization and management of innovation processes.. a difficulty in achieving this is that in most theory-building research one or both of these concepts are not known. measurement validity: a shared standard for qualitative and quantitative research. the six companies requesting the development of a best practice also wanted the study to generate an evaluation of their own practices. a causal relation is a relation between two variable characteristics a and b of an object of study in which a value of a (or its change) permits or results in a value of b (or in its change). recommend beginning any practice-oriented research project with a thorough exploration of the practice to which the research is oriented in order to determine whether hypotheses can be found that should be tested. flowchart 2b a distinction is made between four different starting points for the research. these articles: argue that case study research is useful for some topics or questions or research objectives (objectives). his books include standardization – a business approach to the role of national standardization organizations (kluwer academic publishers. the result of the study thus far is depicted in figure 9..Orientation (page 33) orientation is an initial exploration of a topic of interest aimed at identifying and formulating a provisional global research objective. objective of this study is to contribute to the development of theory t {specify the object of study} by testing the following new propositions p:{specify proposition p1} {specify proposition p2} {… etc. that such a theory-building study (rather than further exploration followed by testing) is only necessary and appropriate if no educated guess is possible about the most likely type of relation. although the international journal of operations & production management is not a strategy research journal. by using bibliographic databases to identify scientific publications regarding the research topic. find books on case study methods search the catalogue using the subject heading case method. depending on the chosen research strategy – one instance for a single case study..These general research objective formulations do not specify which knowledge must be generated in order to make the intended contribution. causal relation (page 35) a causal relation is a relation between two variable characteristics a and b of an object of study in which a value of a (or its change) permits. we analysed the abstracts of all publications on this final list of case study publications. however, the dependent variable is total distribution costs, which is the result of the separate distribution costs studied in case study 3. the research objective of a theory-building study that begins from such a situation. quasi survey (page 83) a quasi survey is a comparative case study in which a probabilistic proposition is tested. proposition formulates what is common to all three cases of a purchase of an instrumental service in this study. and lee (2002) tested three “theories-in-use” of business process redesign using what they call “a positivist case study”. shows all considered store locations of the 14 retailers involved in this study. the longitudinal single case study or the comparative case study is the second-best strategy for testing a deterministic relation. business journals that have published five or more case studies from 2002–2005. we do not limit case studies to the study of contemporary events. business case studies are available for purchase via clearing houses. often the objective of such a study is to build and describe a typology of a phenomenon of interest in order to get more insight into how the phenomenon looks in different situations. case selection in descriptive practice-oriented research is also confined either to the practice to which the research is oriented or to the domain of similar practices from which something could be learned. the academic community is the primary user of research findings. the proposition in this study specified necessary conditions and the selection was done on the basis of the presence of the dependent concept. except for three retailers for which it was not possible to separate some foreign shops from dutch shops in this study. this chapter we assume that a theory-building research objective (of one of the four types discussed in chapter 8) has been formulated and that. generalizability is not a characteristic of a study but of a proposition. is something a research community aims to be able to do after a series of replications rather than claiming to be able to do on the basis of an assumed degree of representativeness of the instances in which a test was conducted. an informant extracts and reports evidence for a researcher but without being instructed as a researcher and. we omitted those publications from the list that were not actually publications dealing with an empirical case study. the researcher has decided after a successful exploration that descriptive research is needed. research that starts with a known independent variable and is aimed at. how to test a probabilistic relation with a case study.. contribution of the study to the research objective – consequences of the results for the theory. coined the term serial study for a study in which a series of replications is conducted. study’s objective was to test a new proposition about the relation between time access window pressure and distribution costs for retailers. if this book is used as a companion guide for students in the process of designing and conducting their own research project.. we provide an analysis of the broad field of business in the recent period 2000–2005.) florens slob received an msc degree in business administration from rsm erasmus university. these statements were tested in a single instance of successful business process redesign. theory-testing research: theory-testing research is research with the objective of testing propositions. i research strategy: a parallel single case study for each hypothesis. the case study draws conclusions on the basis of a “qualitative” analysis (“visual inspection”) of scores from one single instance (single case study) or from a small number of instances (comparative case study). case study 2 therefore suggests selecting cases for replication from a part of the domain that is most discussed in the literature. we define “practice” and we formulate the aim of practice-oriented research: to contribute to the knowledge (through research) of practitioners in order to support them in acting effectively. then the specific research objective can be formulated as follows:The objective of this study is to contribute to the development of theory t {specify the object of study} by re-testing the following existing propositions p:{specify proposition p1} {specify proposition p2} {… etc. and can also express the research strategy (for example by inclusion of a phrase such as “using a single case study”). i do relevant parties agree that the research question that is formulated is the most relevant in the current circumstances? they state that this study has successfully challenged the technocentric theory regarding business process design and also invalidates the sociocentric theory, “thereby demonstrating the lack of survivability of both these perspectives”. appendix provides suggestions for the structure and topics of a case study research report. using case methods in the study of contemporary business networks. but we have explicitly written this book with an audience of students and novice case study researchers in business and management in mind. the research objective of a theory-building study that begins from this situation can be further specified as follows:The objective of this study is to contribute to the development of theory regarding topic t {specify the object of study} by specifying the relation between concepts a and b {specify the independent and the dependent concept}.. note that the chosen subjects do not cover the whole field of business and management. research that starts with an unknown independent variable and an unknown dependent variable and is aimed at. this implies that publications of research that could be considered case study research but presents itself as something else (such as “ethnography”) are not included. it does not refer to the set of instances that is selected for a study. how could one begin to conduct an empirical study with the aim of finding something (concepts and a relation between them) without having any idea of what one is searching for?

Case study as a research strategy: Investigating extreme weather The successful business plan

"Recommendations for Using the Case Study Method in

are two ways to use the case study for testing a deterministic relation. jan dul and tony hak have set out to provide a structured and broader view of the use of case study research. and informants uwv 201 representatives involved in interaction with the service provider 203 level of perceived risk 203 type of buying company representatives involved 205 type of buying company representatives involved 211 preferred research strategies for testing different types of hypotheses 220 scholarly business journals that have published five or more case studies from 2002–2005 265. proposes a four-step process for conducting case study research that is oriented to theory-testing.. these conclusions could be tested in instances of the object of study that are not covered by the database. many of them are indexed by databases such as business source premier. the research is aimed at finding concepts and sometimes also at specifying the type of relation between them. in part ii we discuss principles of theory-testing research in general (chapter 4) and of the theory-testing case study in particular (chapters 5. statistical generalizability (page 47) statistical generalizability is the likelihood that research results obtained in a sample of a population are also true for the population. probabilistic relation can be tested with a comparative case study. theory-building comparative case study (page 182) a theory-building comparative case study is a case study in which one or more propositions are built on the basis of a comparison between scores obtained from a small number of cases in a theoretical domain. universe of instances of the object of study to which the theory was applicable consists of all distribution activities of all (large) retailers in western europe that are (at least partly) located in shopping areas in cities in which time access windows could be installed. this strategy for testing the sufficient condition is comparable with a case study with many (parallel) replications at the same time. many theories in business research have not been put to such a test. with “study” we mean a research project in which a practice-oriented or theory-oriented research objective is formulated and achieved..Experimental research (page 5) experimental research (or “the experiment”) is a research strategy in which (a) one or more variable characteristics of an object of study are manipulated in one or multiple (“experimental”) instances of an object of study. based on their experience as reviewers of papers using case study research in academic operations management journals. the known and unknown variables of the hypothesis to be built must be further specified before an appropriate research strategy can be chosen. an obvious practical implication of this study’s result is that it can be taken as a fact that an increase in the number of time access windows and a decrease in window length both result in higher distribution costs. example: “a study into differences of leadership practices between private and public sector organizations in atlanta, usa”. on business decision making and management throughout key global emerging markets. an object of measurement is not the same as the object of study. in an attempt to serve both students and experienced researchers. and the two really distinctive features of the case study in comparison to the survey and the experiment create our definition of the case study:A case study is a study in which (a) one case (single case study) or a small number of cases (comparative case study) in their real life context are selected. reason why we want to design a theory-building study is precisely because we do not yet have any proposition. appendix 2 of this book presents a list of the journals that published five or more papers on case study research between 2000 and 2005. a probabilistic relation can be visualized as a scatter plot of instances of the object of study of interest. halinen and törnroos (2005) provide general guidelines for doing case study research on business networks in a similar vein. theory-testing comparative case study (page 43) a theory-testing comparative case study is a case study in which a probabilistic proposition is tested in a small population or in a sample from a population. the common emphasis of journals on “originality” as a criterion for good and publishable research may hamper the much-needed increase of the number of replication studies. (c) reformulating them (through initial theory-testing research or replication research).. practice-oriented research is designed and conducted in order to produce the knowledge that is needed by practitioners. our third main aim of the book is to emphasize the role of replication in all theory-testing research. those collaborative agreements containing some arrangements for technology transfer or joint research have been collected for this database. a third group of cases showed how university groups successfully helped businesses. remember that we define a survey as a study in which (a) a single population in the real life context is selected. 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 a comparative case study there are similar cases with different values on the independent variable. the journals with most case study publications were international journal of operations & production management. the interpretation of scores of the (small number of ) cases in order to generate the outcome of the study is done qualitatively (by visual inspection) and not statistically. exploration: exploration for theory development is collecting and evaluating relevant information about theory and practice in order to assess how exactly research could best contribute to the development of theory. some authors elaborate on the use of case study research for testing purposes. there might already be much theoretical knowledge that might be relevant to the practice to which the research is oriented. it is claimed that all these three conditions hold for many topics in business research. we realized that the results can be presented as a “flash case study” to illustrate the basic ideas of practiceoriented case study research (this box). we decided that the best practice that should be developed in this study would not be based on criteria for the quality of the products of the standardization process (the company standards themselves) but rather on process criteria. as “product launch in the market” (case study 1) or “satisfaction with project performance” (case study 2). i use such guidelines in evaluations of published research (evaluation). the objective of theory-oriented research is to contribute to the development of theory. usually it will be tested in the same study according to the principles discussed in 10. we consider it essential to good theorybuilding research (in contrast to mere “exploration”) that the emerging proposition is proven to be true in the instances studied and that. if the research topic is “critical success factors of innovation projects” the factors that presumably contribute to success are variable characteristics. implications of the outcome of the research are discussed: i i i i limitations of the research (e. a hypothesis is confirmed or rejected in one study (“oneshot”). how the research objective can be further specified by specifying propositions (in theory-oriented research) and hypotheses (in practice-oriented research). we think that our approach to case study research is useful in all (social) sciences. the phrase "case study" with your keyword(s) or company. our “how to” guide for how to design and conduct the theory-testing case study. a second aim of this book is to contribute to the methodological debate about the appropriateness of the case study as a research. a confirmation or a rejection of a hypothesis (representing a proposition) in a theory-testing study has implications for the theory. (2006) propose a classification of business services based on how the buying company uses the service with respect to its own offerings. in this chapter we discuss a number of fundamental issues regarding research. or in a number of instances of the object of study (e. or is it more desirable to contribute to the knowledge of practitioners who will (ideally) be able to act upon your results (practice-oriented research)?. and the corresponding seven types of theory-oriented research that were discussed in part ii (chapters 5..Although the researcher must have known all the time what kind of evidence is needed for scoring the value of a specific variable. the general objective of the study can be formulated as follows:The general objective of this study is to contribute to the development of theory regarding topic t {specify the research topic}. kpn offered us the opportunity to study two instrumental services in-depth. constructed by an individual researcher after exploration of existing knowledge and ideas from the literature as well as experts.. our candidate cases were the set of cases that we had selected for case study 3. the number of replications within one study (reported in a single research article) depends only on time and money constraints. this implies that choosing either the case study or the survey as the research strategy in a theory-testing study depends on the type of proposition. or the domain of similar practices in which a similar design has been implemented) that are selected for study. the proposition that had to be built in this study (then still a proposition with an empty space) concerned the domain of communications between buyers and sellers of business services after the purchase of such a service. the researcher must try to explain the result of the test on the basis of other information about the case.. such a grounding of a definition is not a requirement for good theory-building research. research that starts with a known dependent variable and is aimed at. and aspects of the object of study about which no proposition has been found. multiple case study (page 45) a multiple case study is a case study with more than one case. in an international context: new zealand case series, a mcgraw-hill custom publication prepared for the university of auckland business case centre by wendell dunn & ian hunter.. if the researcher does not know what the relevant factors or effects could be and does not know how the concepts in the resulting proposition will be related (e. and have not used our own definition of the case study..The role of case studies in research is a paradox. theory-building research: theory-building research is research with the objective of formulating new propositions based on the evidence drawn from observation of instances of the object of study.

Write a linear function, chapter deals with theory-testing case study research for testing two types of propositions with a single case study:Sufficient condition:if there is a. we identified papers reporting case study research by selecting those publications that had the term “case study”. in the comparative case study two or more cases are selected. authors claim that case study research can achieve the same scientific rigour as other research methodologies when correctly applied (lee. we specified the three propositions in this study as follows. then the reformulated proposition needs to be tested in new theory-testing research. theory-building study might start from a strictly descriptive aim of discovering and describing concepts that might later become relevant for a theory (see figure 8.. define research topic i in this book we define the terms “proposition” and “hypothesis” as having distinct meanings. the outcome of the study was a confirmation of the hypothesis. can be studied to get a general picture of the steps that are needed for designing and conducting a research project.. we hope that our book will contribute to the quality of your research. the researcher must define in a quite detailed way what is considered a “real” delivery time and what not.. we specified the three propositions in this study as follows. the researcher will be able to formulate a proposition for testing. in the longitudinal single case study one instance is selected for measurement of both the independent and the dependent concept over time. study research has been advocated as a valid research strategy in marketing (bonoma. the relevant variable is not known at the start of the study.. the research strategy chosen was the parallel single case study.. if the research is commissioned by an organization with the aim of getting recommendations regarding solving a practical problem. most authors advocate the use of case study research for studies with exploratory aims. no initial proposition was formulated in this study and no testing was conducted. would require considerable cost and risk that could not be justified by the objective of this research. the one important difference between hypothesis-testing research and theory-testing research is the domain from which instances are selected for the test. his research interests include human centred design of products and processes. many of the breakthrough concepts and theories in my field – operations management – from lean production to manufacturing strategy have been developed through exploratory case study research., david and dina mayzlin (2004), “using online conversations to study word-of-mouth communication,” marketing science, 23 (4), 545–60. the relevance of emphasizing this fundamental principle of theory development in this book is that a common criticism of case study research concerns the alleged “lack of generalizability” of the results of a case study. he leads a research programme on systemic innovation in ict. it is usually discovered that a whole set of more or less explicit theories about relevant aspects of the object of study exists. the propositions in this study specified necessary conditions and the selection was done on the basis of the presence of the dependent concept. standardization – a business approach to the role of national standardization organizations. emphasize the distinction between these two types of research objectives (practice. see object of measurement data matrix (page 189) a data matrix is a visual representation of scores obtained in a theory-building comparative case study. in that sense this book is a textbook from which readers can learn how to conduct a case study (see section 1. we discuss the case study as a research strategy defined by the number of instances (n ϭ 1 or n ϭ small) that is studied as well as the “qualitative” or non-statistical method of analysis of all kinds of (quantitative and qualitative) data. result of exploration of practice for this study was the identification of a problem-finding knowledge need regarding the firm’s ability to launch successfully new products on the market.. case study 3 discusses this possibility and concludes that it is not feasible because it is too difficult to collect accurate historical data on both time window pressure and distribution costs. (0)downloadembeddescription: dul & hak - case case study methodology in business research. object of study in case study 4 is the same as in case study 3: distribution activities by retailers from a retailer’s distribution centre to the shops during one week. validity (page 260) validity is the extent to which a research procedure can be considered to capture meaningfully its aims. this information might come from any source that is in contact with the object of study (insights from experts. there are three forms of practice-oriented research:Descriptive practice-oriented research. examples of such research questions that specify categories are:An overview of the kinds of things about which our workers complain. case studies in business research that are presented as multiple case studies are most often a series of case studies in which theories are built or applied. it is hoped that new instances of the object of study will be found. qualitative analysis (page 5) qualitative analysis is identifying and evaluating a pattern in the scores obtained in a study. implicitly it seems that the theory is applicable in different sectors as the study was done in supermarket, department store, fashion shop, and specialist shop sectors. the introduction the results of the preparation phase of the research are summarized. the section on implementing case study research methodology discusses how to formulate questions and set up an interview protocol.-oriented research: implications for theory practice-oriented research: implications for practice theory-oriented research: towards experts practice-oriented research: towards practitioners. case study handbook: how to read, discuss, and write persuasively about cases by william ellet. a relation between as yet unknown independent and dependent variables – hypothesis-building by a comparative case study. we argue that the choice of a research strategy (i. a theory is a system of propositions (relations between concepts) regarding an object of study in a specified domain. very general format of a theory-building research objective must be further specified as one of four different types of theory-building research. the most important criterion for case selection in hypothesis-building research. such insights are also very helpful in later stages of the research process. theory-oriented) because not making this distinction explicitly at the beginning of a study (in the design phase) and in its evaluation at the end of the project. of the reasons that we emphasize the terms “serial” and “parallel” study is that we want to stress the difference between the selection of cases and populations (for testing) from a domain on the one hand. we define theory as a system of statements (propositions) about relations between concepts that describe aspects of the object of study in a domain of instances of that object of study.. most of these authors consider case study research as a useful research strategy (a) when the topic is broad and highly complex. we define the case study as a study in which (a) one case (single case study) or a small number of cases (comparative case study) in their real life context are selected and (b) scores obtained from these cases are analysed in a qualitative manner. the evidence must be taken away from it and stored somewhere where the researcher has access to it when he wants to analyse the obtained information. is not only a strategy for confirming a hypothesis but is also a way by which one aims to learn more about the object of study by identifying instances in which the hypothesis (as presently formulated) is rejected. the percentages of case study publications in the last two columns are relative to the total number in the respective previous column. study evaluation: past, present and future challenges edited by jill russell et al. because the only aim of the study is to generate propositions (that need to be tested in further studies anyway). case study research is published in the respective core journals.. similar to how exploration of practice in theory-oriented research will provide for a set of such theories. the use of the case study method in logistics research. the universe of instances of the object of study is bounded by the geographical boundary of western europe where retailers and local governments are familiar with the concept of time access windows. this matrix is the basis for the final analysis of the theory-building case study. can be further specified as follows:The objective of this study is to contribute to the development of theory regarding topic t {specify the object of study} by finding an independent. and partly a parallel case study for the other three types of product innovation. choose case study as a document type along with keywords. and 3) is an introduction to research in general and the role of case study research in particular. search under methodologies - methods and browse for the term case study. concepts of interest in this study are:Type of innovation; success of the project; collaboration characteristics. the four types of hypothesis-building research are the same as the four types of theory-building research: 1. chapter can be summarized by the following list of possible types of practice-oriented research:Testing of a hypothesis that expresses a necessary or sufficient condition – hypothesis-testing by an experiment or a single case study. although there has been a number of important articles and books on case study research in business. usually results in severe misunderstandings about what was achieved in the study. ecological validity is the extent to which the outcome of a laboratory experiment applies to instances of the object of study in its real life context. how to test a deterministic relation with a case study. Write business plan pdf file - format of this research objective is similar to the format of theorytesting research. if the aim of the research was to “generalize” the outcomes to similar practices. “the population of european airline companies”) rather than in a group of instances selected for the study.. make the “right” decision regarding one’s general research objective? practice domain (page 221) a practice domain is the universe of instances of the object of study in practiceoriented research. case studies are widely used by many communities in business research. this implies that each concept that emerges from the research must be defined precisely (after its “emergence”) and that it must be assessed whether the data. how to test a sufficient or a necessary condition with a case study. define the general research objective and the general type of research 3. the aim of descriptive practice-oriented research is to discover and describe variables within a broader category. the object of study was innovation projects in which two or more firms collaborated on product innovation. this phase can be skipped and the researcher can immediately start measuring the concepts (as described below in 9. the researcher’s definition needs to be translated in precise procedures that are then applied to candidate occasions of delivery time. in the field of comparative politics research when propositions about nations with specific characteristics.. relations that were “significant” on the 5 per cent risk level in one study were absent in the other studies..2 shows the preferred research strategies for the different types of propositions. Business research for empirical researchYou are hereuniversity home » library » guides » business and economics » business case studies. it must be determined whether experimental research would be useful and feasible. after the test has been conducted the results of theory-testing research can be used for (re)formulating propositions. cross-functional influence in new product development- an exploratory study of marketing and r… d perspectives. define the specific research objective and the specific type of research 4. an example is the definition of research that might include a range of types of research (such as theoretical research and philosophical research) but in this glossary is limited to empirical research only because we do not discuss the other existent types of research in this book. most reports on survey research present the results of a single survey (with a single population of instances) in which a series of hypotheses is tested of which some are confirmed and some are rejected in that study. could also be to select a case from the same part of the domain: the new case in a serial case study would be another case from nokia. for harvard business school and case centre for educators material university of auckland business school academics should contact the business case centre..The difference between practice-oriented and theory-oriented research is particularly relevant if a theory consists of probabilistic propositions. the researcher may want to conduct an exploration again in order to identify other propositions for testing. data were generated by the same model that was used in case study 3. usually a smaller subset of instances is selected from the population for the study. then there is an ongoing business relation between buyer and provider. to improve reliability of the collected data, the first interviews were conducted by the two researchers together to become experienced with the method and to develop an agreed-upon approach to follow. before one of these is chosen as the one that should be addressed in the research project. instances of the object of study must be selected from the domain. we group these two forms together in one type of hypothesis-testing research. external validity is the extent to which the outcome of a study in one instance or in a group of instances applies (or can be generalized) to instances other than those in the study. every replication study begins with an evaluation of the results of all preceding tests of the proposition and a study is designed such that it maximally contributes to the current theoretical debate about the robustness of the proposition and the domain to which it applies. the general research objective for a theory-building study can be formulated as follows:The objective of this study is to contribute to the development of theory regarding topic t {specify the object of study} by formulating new propositions {specify the phenomenon about which a proposition should be built}. the universe of instances of the object of study is bounded by the geographical boundary of western europe where retailers and local governments are familiar with the concept of time access windows. procurement legal former director it business divisions higher management purchasing (category manager) marketing/communications business stakeholders level and type of involvement depends on type of temporary labour being purchased. discuss results i test results (20 confirmations and 0 rejections) give sufficient support for the correctness of the statement “in high quality business research journals. most business researchers assume that deterministic conditions and relations do not exist in the actual practice of management and business. yin’s and others’ definitions only highlight another distinctive characteristic of the case study. to select one or more of these propositions for being tested in the study.. the case study (either the longitudinal single case study or the comparative case study) is the second-best strategy for testing a deterministic relation and the comparative case study is the third-best strategy for testing a probabilistic relation..Suggestions for students to design and conduct a research project. in such cases the research is theory-oriented and should be designed as such. and readers (such as students) who want to use the book as a textbook for designing and conducting a research project. and connections to the creation and development of businesses around the world. these propositions have been built in this (invented) theory-building case study. comparative case study (page 45) a comparative case study is a study in which (a) a small number of cases in their real life context are selected.. the archaeology of business networks: the use of archival records in case study research.. this phase of the research process can be concluded with a list of candidate propositions. and that an unknown number of publications of research that is not case study research according to our definition is included. (we will explain our concept of “object of study” in chapter 3. they only considered papers that used case study research for theorybuilding or theory-testing purposes.. it was explained how a sample of 14 dutch retailers with different competitive strategies was selected for this study. no concept is known at the beginning of the study (as depicted in figures 8. journal of operations & production management international journal of production research international journal of technology management industrial marketing management european journal of operational research interfaces production planning & control journal of management studies long range planning human relations organization studies journal of operations management industrial management & data systems california management review technovation human resource management` journal of business research journal of business ethics industrial robot. one aim is to present to students and novice case study researchers a broad spectrum of types of case study research (including practice-oriented case studies. researchers in this study needed to use a framework that helped them to decide which kinds of processes should be looked for in the six companies. data analysis (page 5) data analysis is the interpretation of scores obtained in a study in order to generate the outcome of the study. (2001) also advocate case study research as a strategy that is useful for theory-testing. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 the difference between practice-oriented and theory-oriented research 31 what is a theory. we wrote this book with the ambition of giving a methodological framework that supports such high quality case study research. despite the widespread belief that case study research is not an appropriate research strategy for theory-testing. objective of this research is to contribute to the development of theory about the relation between the organizational configuration of product innovation projects and the success of these projects by testing the following new proposition. and replication) by which a research project can contribute to the development of a specific theory. a test of a proposition is determining whether a hypothesis that is derived from the proposition is confirmed or rejected in an instance of the object of study.. after the respondent has marked his answers to the items (evidence) and the researcher has stored these answers in a database (data). relative efficiency or convenience of different research strategies will differ for different topics or phenomena. chapter deals with theory-testing case study research for testing a probabilistic relation.. these descriptions can form a starting point for further research in which propositions might be tested that are based on the assumptions that we used when we formulated the criteria that form the basis of the best practice that we developed. the entities to which our theory applies are instances of the ongoing interaction between buyers and providers of business services after the purchase of such a service. objective of this descriptive research was to contribute to the improvement of the company standardization processes of six companies by designing a best practice. the research is aimed at identifying and specifying the independent concept as well as specifying the type of relation between the two concepts. in this part ii we discuss theorytesting research and in part iii theory-building research. statistical generalizability is the likelihood that research results obtained in a sample of a population are also true for the population. success in this study is defined as a successful product launch: not in terms of high revenues or sales of a new product after its launch. a useful tool is to write at least two different (fictional) press releases about the study results (before even having started to design the research). our book we do not use the term multiple case study for the case study with more than one case. theory-oriented research and practiceoriented research are (at least partially) different activities that must be evaluated according to partially different types of criteria (see box 1). since the search term “case study” resulted in all publications with only the word. how to test a sufficient or a necessary condition with a case study. recommend the “multiple case study” as the preferred research design..

then it is important to justify decisions and to estimate its consequences for the outcome of the research. the research objective of such a theory-building study can be specified as follows:The objective of this study is to contribute to the development of theory regarding topic t {specify the object at study} by discovering and describing a phenomenon of interest {specify the phenomenon}. hence the study could be characterized as initial theory-testing research. it is of great importance for this study that these experts confirmed in meetings that the simulation models and their results were realistic. not possible to make use of research strategies (and their inherent methods of data analysis) such as experiments or surveys that assume that at least one relevant variable (such as an independent variable in an experiment) is known. i discovering and describing a relevant concept by a comparative case study..This proposition formulates what is common to the two cases (1 and 2) of a purchase of a consumption service in this study. candidate case (page 92) a candidate case is a member of a set of cases from which the researcher will select one case or a small number of cases for a case study. objective of the research was to test a new theory. and not the invariable object of study that the theory is about. there can be no instances of the object of study in the cell “a absent/b present”. but the researcher in hypothesis-testing research is not interested in knowing whether the cases in this practice are “most likely” or “least likely” in terms of a theory.. nevertheless we consider exploration as an important activity in theory development in which the researcher must creatively combine ideas from others and his/her own ideas. there is a danger that a probabilistic approach will unwittingly creep into the analysis (comparative case study). theory-building experimental research is useful in principle in two following situations: if an independent concept a is known and an independent concept b must be found. case study 1 does not conclude that the corresponding propositions in the theory are incorrect. the researcher needs to have the cooperation of company staff. this illustrates the disadvantage of the parallel single case study approach. books held include:The anatomy of the case study by gary thomas. replicating the study in the same situation (the same instance for case study research. 15 projects were successful and could therefore be included in the case study to test the necessary condition proposition. how to test a deterministic relation with a case study. book provides guidance for designing and conducting a case study. (b) in research papers in the academy of management journal (amj ). theory-oriented research regarding the same intervention in the same organization would have another objective and. chapter 2 (“a review of case studies in business research”) raf jans and koen dittrich present a literature review of recently published case studies in business research. these publications were concentrated in the typical operations management and operations research journals. independent concept (page 36) an independent concept is a variable characteristic a of an object of study of which the value (or its change) permits. a test of a hypothesis (in hypothesis-testing practice-oriented research) is determining whether a hypothesis is confirmed or rejected in an instance of an object of study (or in a group of instances or population). theory-oriented research starts with exploration of theory in order to find propositions on the research topic. objective of this research is to contribute to the theory about the relationship between time access window pressure and distribution costs for large retailers by testing the following new proposition:Proposition: each increase in time window access pressure causes an increase in all four dimensions of distribution costs.. dubé and paré discovered that only 42 per cent of the publications stated a clear research question and only 8 per cent clearly stated their unit of analysis.. this procedure helps the researcher to avoid the error that only a probabilistic relation is discovered even in situations in which the data matrix contains evidence for stronger relations. that there is sufficient evidence for the absence of implementation activities in the three groups that successfully supported businesses. their focus has been primarily on theorybuilding through exploratory case study research. then an instance of the object of study can only be in three of the four cells. wairere pakihi: māori business case studies by malcolm mulholland. an alternative test is that one instance of the object of study (a case) in which condition a is absent is selected. we refer to other textbooks that discuss experimental research and survey research for advice about how to design and conduct hypothesis-testing and hypothesis-building experiments and surveys. a longitudinal single case study a single case is selected that shows a relatively large variation in the value of the independent variable over time. concept (page 35) a concept is a variable aspect of an object of study as defined in a theory. it could be possible that the propositions built in the study would only hold in the one company in which they were found. of research in general (not only case study research) overview of the authors’ main ideas on case study research literature review of case studies in business research case studies for theory-testing case studies for theory-building case studies for practice-oriented research “how to” design and conduct case study research examples of case study research methodological reflections on the examples of case study research. outcome of a successful theory-building study usually consists of one or more new propositions that also have been put to an initial test. carrying out your search select case study from the document type box. in order to keep track of the steps that are needed for designing and conducting different types of research we present flowcharts at several places in the book. Case studies aim to analyze specific issues within the boundaries of a specific environment. many business and management problems are formulated as necessary conditions. a confirmation or a rejection of a hypothesis in a practice-oriented study. exploration (page 38) exploration is collecting and evaluating relevant information about theory or about a practice in order to assess exactly how research could best contribute to either the development of theory or a practitioner’s knowledge. case study that deals with a strategic issue in operations management might appear in both the fields of strategy and operations. case study 2 rejects the likelihood that the test results were the result of a too-strict test procedure. an applicationbased classification to understand buyer–supplier interaction in business services. and care is needed in drawing generalizable conclusions from a limited set of cases and in ensuring rigorous research) the results of case study research can have very high impact.. propositions derived from theorybuilding research should be grounded in observations that can be justifiably seen as indicators or measurements of the concepts of the proposition that is built. parallel single case study is case study research with a replication strategy in which a number of single cases are selected at the same time and the same proposition is tested in each of them without taking into account the outcome of any of the separate tests. business researchers usually make a choice between the survey and the case study as the main strategy in their research. theory-building case study the following propositions have been built in this study:P2: services associated with a low level of perceived risk have a pattern of interaction in which only representatives of the internal customers are always involved. theory-testing research (page 38) theory-testing research is research with the objective to test propositions.. we claimed that a combination of exploration and theorytesting research (in that order) is a more effective contribution to theory development than spending the same time and resources on theory-building research. in this book we distinguish three broad categories of research strategy: experimental research (“the experiment”). of the four propositions that have been formulated in this study would have been proven to be true if this had been a theory-testing study in which these four propositions were tested. the international journal of operations & production management was an important outlet for publications on case study research. concepts need to be defined precisely to allow for the measurement of their value in instances of the object of study. an advantage of the parallel case study approach is that the chance of finding a rejection of the proposition in one round of (parallel) testing is higher than with a test in a single case.. with the case study a sufficient condition might be rejected. this chapter discusses how to design and conduct a case study in which a proposition with a sufficient condition or a necessary condition is tested. the context of practice-oriented research we use the word hypothesis instead of proposition because practice-oriented research does not aim at contributing to theory or any other generalization. to achieve participation of all firms in our research and to achieve good quality of the data they would provide, we promised all involved firms that we would keep their data confidential. ragin (1992) has argued that the work of any given case study researcher often is characterized by some hybrid of various approaches. the survey is the second-best research strategy for testing a probabilistic relation. but one methodological characteristic by which a case study is distinct from other research strategies such as the survey is not captured in yin’s work.. or consequences of the results for practice (for practiceoriented research). study 6 is oriented to a leading european firm’s practice of new product development. making notes during the interview of what the researcher thinks the respondent wants to say. and in chapter 9 the theory-building case study (aimed at the “discovery” and formulation of new propositions). i 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). theory is a set of propositions about an object of study. a theory has four characteristics that need to be defined precisely: the object of study. the next decision that a researcher must make is to determine the general research objective: will the study be theory-oriented or practice-oriented (step 2 in flowchart 1)?. many propositions in business research express (explicitly or implicitly) a probabilistic relation between variables. review articles on case study research show that many case studies suffer from a lack of scientific rigour. implications of outcome for theory (for theory-oriented research) or for practice (for practice-oriented research). many propositions in business research have the form “a results in b” or “a contributes to b” or “a affects b”.

testing of a hypothesis that expresses a deterministic relation – hypothesis-testing by an experiment or a comparative case study.. just as in case selection in theory-building case study research. which are representative for a specific field in business research. if one research project consists of a series of replications one could call that project a serial study. success is a variable characteristic of the object of study that can be present or absent or present to a certain extent in an instance of the object of study (i.. the domain of a theory is a specification of the universe of the instances of the object of study for which the propositions of the theory are believed to be true. we show that the case study is the second-best research strategy for testing deterministic relation.. and requirements of case study research have been discussed in those scientific journals. ideas for research topics orientation of practice and theory about the research topic exploration: for theory-oriented research using the empirical cycle. because an experimental research strategy was not feasible in this study. the study would hardly qualify as research and could better be called a form of “intensive exploration”. case (page 4) a case is an instance of an object of study. instances are selected from the practice domain to which the research is oriented or from other practices that are similar. there can be no instances of the object of study in the cell “a present/b absent”. the result of (good) descriptive practice-oriented research is a true or valid description of types of variables (complaints. theory-building research deciding on the type of practice-oriented research a. in order to find knowledge regarding “the kinds of things about which our workers complain” the researcher needs (a) to identify different situations with different kinds of worker. because these conditions cannot be manipulated experimentally, the case study. the body of knowledge regarding the topic of the research (results of the exploration). and replication 46 the term hypothesis in practice-oriented research 57 is business reality deterministic or probabilistic? the research is aimed at specifying the type of relation. then the new case in a serial case study would not have been a case from nokia. if the aim of the study was not just to find relations between type of service and type of interaction in the broad spectrum of all instances of a purchase of a service. e-book, the ultimate guide to writing a dissertation in business studies: a step by step assistance offers practical assistance to complete a dissertation with minimum or no stress. study 2 suggests a replication strategy in which the proposition is tested in another domain (physical products. we emphasize and clearly illustrate (in chapters 4 and 5) that the case study is the preferred research strategy for testing deterministic propositions case by case and that the survey is the preferred research strategy for testing probabilistic propositions in a population. it is usually concluded that theory-building research should be conducted. almost 10 per cent (62) of all isi listed publications on case study research in 2000–2005 (689) have been published in this journal. in practice-oriented research we are only interested in knowing whether or not the feature makes a positive difference in the concrete circumstances of the practice to which the study is oriented. research strategies are not defined by their methods of measurement. define theory-oriented research as research that is aimed at contributing to the development of theory.. an alternative strategy for case selection is that a candidate case is selected and that it is verified in the measurement phase of the research whether the concept is indeed present. checking whether the case (innovation project) was successful and therefore could be included in the study. the aim of descriptive theory-oriented research is to discover and describe concepts of theoretical interest. format of this research objective is similar to the format of theorybuilding research. manipulation of aspects of the object of study) is not possible (which is often true in business research). how to test a sufficient or a necessary condition with a case study. study 5 starts implicitly with a proposition with an empty space at the position of the dependent concept. there are three types of exploration for theoryoriented research that will be discussed below:Exploration of theory.. these companies expressed the wish that research be conducted in order to help them to improve their own standardization performance by describing. the general research objective for such research can be formulated as follows:The objective of this study is to contribute to the knowledge regarding problem p {specify here the problem and its phase in the intervention cycle} by formulating hypotheses on the relation between variables v {specify the variables between which a relation will be formulated in the hypothesis}. the concepts of the theory are the variable characteristics of the object of study. what matters only in theory-oriented research is whether the study’s results contribute to one or more steps in the theory development process. goal of theory-oriented research is to contribute to the development of theory.. case study 1 adopted this strategy for the two propositions on level of commitment (3a and 3b). a serious problem in business research literature is that “negative” outcomes (rejections of hypotheses in single studies) tend not to be published. with the exception of a group of instances selected for a quasi survey (see chapter 7: “testing a probabilistic relation with a case study”). choice of a research strategy in hypothesis-building research is governed by the same rules and principles as in theory-building research. a hypothesis-building comparative case study must be designed and conducted. study 1 does not suggest a reformulation of a proposition that was not confirmed. several authors provide a list of topics or questions for which they deem case study research particularly useful. we conducted our study at two buying companies as opposed to one company. and accessing sources of evidence and for generating a valid and reliable score for each of the variables specified at the outset of the study. the research is aimed at identifying and specifying the dependent concept as well as specifying the type of relation between the two concepts. object of study in this chapter is an alliance project in which two or more firms collaborated on product innovation. many theory-oriented research proposals mention as their objective to “fill a gap” in our theoretical knowledge. the single case study is the second-best research strategy for testing hypotheses that express a sufficient condition or a necessary condition.. then the specific research objective can be formulated as follows.. the researcher needs to find the relevant documents in which the end date of the project can be found. library website:Case studies is a popular research method in business area. replication thus involves most often also the selection of a new case (in a case study) or a new population (in a survey). objective of practice-oriented research is to contribute to the knowledge of a practitioner (not practitioners in general). the general format of the research objective of theory-oriented research. the case study determines the relation between the independent and the dependent concepts in one instance or a small group of instances of the object of study as it occurs in its real life context. replication strategy (page 88) a replication strategy is a plan for the identification and selection of an instance of an object of study (or in a group of instances or population) for a next test of a proposition. they have produced a valuable addition to the armoury of the business researcher.. the result of this stage of the theory-building case study is a candidate concept for the initially unknown concept in the conceptual model with which the study started. perry (1998) provides a blueprint for case study research in marketing at the master’s and phd level. a stepwise approach to research deciding on the type of theory-oriented research a. namely the fact that a case study basically is an inquiry of only one single instance (the case). instance of an object of study (page 4) an instance of an object of study is one occurrence of the object of study..Group of instances (page 46) a group of instances is a small set of instances of an object of study for comparative case study research. case study handbook: how to read, discuss and write persuasively about cases by william ellet. is a list of scholarly business journals that have published five or more case studies from 2002–2005. the researcher must (re)construct a company’s satisfaction with a project through interviews. and if the resulting candidate concepts in a publication were offered to other researchers for testing. the case for the single case study must be selected on the basis of the presence or absence of the dependent concept or independent concept.-best (single case study) second-best (single case study) second-best (longitudinal single case study or comparative case study) third-best (comparative case study). then the hypothesis in a comparative case study can be formulated as follows:Hypothesis: the rank order of cases.) hans quak obtained an msc degree in business administration from rsm erasmus university. in order to do this we need to study a diverse set of retailers and to assess for each retailer whether increases of time window pressure always cause increases on all four dimensions of distribution costs. a complication regarding the case selection in this specific type of theory-testing case study is that the value of one of the concepts must be known before case selection. (2005) that most case study articles in the operations management and supply chain management literature do not sufficiently discuss methodological issues. knew how to find the information about these projects that was relevant to this study.  Write perfect cv cover letter- care of business: indigenous business case studies by naomi smyth, miriana ikin & liz norman.. the study of instances of an object of study as occurring “in its real-life context” (as formulated in our definition) includes both the study of contemporary instances and of past instances. experiment is the preferred research strategy for testing a probabilistic relation. his research interests include the response process in business surveys. a survey is a study in which (a) a single population in the real life context is selected. conversely, the most common way to organize joint incremental innovation projects involves the joint maximization of complementary assets by sharing in the residual returns from a business activity. making it almost impossible to grasp the nature of the debate and to infer solutions to problems in designing their own research. this meant that the objective of this study was achieved. i specifying a relation between as yet unknown independent and dependent concepts – proposition-building by a comparative case study. we formulated a new proposition, we need new theory-testing research. case study 5: building propositions about the kind of company representatives involved in communication with providers of business services (by wendy van der valk and finn wynstra). available for free download from social science research network (ssrn). namely that in a case study the object of study or its environment are not manipulated (“real life context”).. it is also necessary to replicate the tests of the propositions that were supported in new theory-testing research. chapter deals with theory-testing case study research for testing a deterministic relation.-best (single case study) second-best (single case study) second-best (longitudinal single case study or comparative case study) third-best (comparative case study).. with every new replication another study is added to the previous ones. we define theory-building research as research that aims to formulate propositions that are “grounded” in research. at the project manager’s company, each project manager first completed a questionnaire in the presence of the researcher. quantitative analysis (page 5) quantitative analysis is generating and evaluating the output of statistical procedures applied to the scores obtained in a study. the research strategies for testing each of the types of propositions are shown in flowchart 2a and will be discussed below.. define the general research objective and general type of research. number of business databases include case studies on companies or industries, and some journal articles are in effect case studies. although most research articles published in business research journals deal explicitly or implicitly with probabilistic propositions. we have limited our analysis of case study methodology in business research to five main fields. irrespective of which research strategy is chosen for a specific test..2 case study 6: assessing whether a company has sufficient flexibility to develop successfully a new product (by murthy halemane and felix janszen). measurement methods that are usually associated with other research strategies. the methodology of testing a probabilistic relation with a case study is different.. from the formulation of the first ideas about a research topic to the final reporting of its results. case study research is presented by some as a strictly exploratory research strategy in which nothing can be proven. these differences concern case selection and the implications of a study’s outcome. the case study research strategy can be used for analysing and solving practical business problems. case study (page 4) a case study is a study in which (a) one case (single case study) or a small number of cases (comparative case study) in their real life context are selected. theory-building research (page 38) theory-building research is research with the objective of formulating new propositions based on the evidence drawn from observation of instances of the object of study. we found that case study research is mostly used for illustration and exploration. is a strong parallel between the seven types of practice-oriented research formulated in 10. very general format of a theory-oriented research objective must be further specified as one of two different types. a minority of published case studies in business research is theory-oriented.. it is against this background that this book was written in order to emphasize and clearly illustrate the usefulness of case study research for theory-testing.. assuming that the exploration phase at the very beginning of the research project was conducted in a serious manner and that. capability analysis of firms and synergy development of their technologies with business strategies are his research themes. for background you may need to undertake company or industry research. this is the same object of study as in case study 3. the study might be a single experiment in which it is demonstrated that an experimental stimulus has an effect. methods section (written in past tense) describes how the research itself was done and which methodological choices were made: i i i i research strategy – description and justification of the research strategy related to the specific research objective. numbers are copied from financial records (evidence) and these numbers are stored in the researcher’s database (data). for a test in a single or a comparative case study. a minority of published case studies in business research is theory-oriented. the exploration of theory and practice and (sometimes) after conducting theory-building research. we discuss here a stepwise procedure for the development of valid and reliable procedures for the measurement of the value of a concept in an instance of the object of study: 1. there are also other sources of case studies, including books, articles, academic research and free internet sources. the phrase "case study" or "case studies" with other keywords and phrases. have high validity with practitioners – the ultimate user of research. the conceptual model we presume that there is a deterministic relation between time access window pressure and total distribution costs – this is the relation that was tested in case study 3. our definition of the case study is applicable also to the study of instances (cases) of objects of study that existed or occurred in the past. how to test a sufficient or a necessary condition with a case study. candidate cases should be instances from the object of study. the full richness of the original studies can be read in other research publications referred to in the respective chapters. the outcome of the research contributes to the practitioner’s knowledge. the examples are actual case studies and as such provide a realistic picture of what is involved in conducting such a theory-testing case study. we first discuss “how to do” such a case study. agreed with our suggestion that research could help them to improve their own standardization performance by describing. report results i while doing this 10 minute case study research. and a case study) depends on the type of proposition. for a comparative case study two cases are enough if the deterministic relation that is tested is continuously increasing or decreasing. as pdf, txt or read online from scribdflag for inappropriate contentcase study methodology in business research. for a longitudinal case study one case is enough for the tests. we asked each standardization manager to make scores for his company and the researchers themselves also made scores per company. this emphasizes our conviction that designing and conducting a research project is not the execution of a protocol but rather a process in which a researcher makes trade-offs all the time. communicating with practitioners with experience regarding the object of study. representativeness (page 45) the representativeness of a group of instances of an object of study is the degree of similarity between the distribution of the values of the variables in the instances in this group and their distribution in a larger group of instances (which is usually a domain or a population). objective of practice-oriented research is to contribute to the knowledge of a specific practitioner (not practitioners in general). survey (page 5) a survey is a study in which (a) a single population in the real life context is selected. hypotheses must be specified before an appropriate research strategy can be chosen..Theory-oriented research (page 30) theory-oriented research is research of which the objective is to contribute to theory development.. a next necessary step in the research is to develop a valid and reliable measurement instrument. the exploration of “practice” at the very beginning of the research project may have provided information about where specific cases could be found. both the confirmation and the rejection of a hypothesis can be artefacts produced by research errors. case survey methodology: quantitative analysis of patterns across case studies. the quasi-survey comparative case study will include all instances in that small population. for this reason we have not discussed measurement as an issue deserving special treatment in our chapters on how to design and conduct the different forms of case study research. when we use the term “theory” (as in “theory-oriented research” and in “exploration of theory”). organizations & society iie transactions r&d management information & management journal of manufacturing systems production and operations management transportation research.


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