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How to... write a case study

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Why write a case study?

Why might you wish to write a case study and what is it about case studies that makes them appealing subjects for publication for both academics and practitioners?

A case study involves focusing on a set of issues in some contemporary setting, usually but not exclusively an organization, or perhaps a department or sector of an organization. It may use just one case or a number of cases linked together by a theme. Among its uses are:

• To describe a particularly interesting set of circumstances, from which lessons can be drawn for other organizations, for example why did Ford decline despite its globalization policies.
• To illustrate a particular theory or conceptual framework by reference to a specific example, or to test how a particular set of circumstances may give rise to certain outcomes by reference to a particular case.
• To describe a rare phenonenon or very unusual organization, e.g. a library service for commuters.

Because of its real-world setting, it is a powerful tool of analysis, and one that obviously chimes in with Emerald's concern to disseminate implications for practice. It is particularly good at addressing 'how' and 'why' questions as in the following examples:

"Relates how leading escalator and elevator company Schindler employed the US Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) to develop an automated route-scheduling and planning system for its maintenance operations."

"Optimizing periodic maintenance operations for Schindler Elevator Corporation"
F. Blakeley, B. Bozkaya, B. Cao, W. Hall and J. Knolmajer
Interfaces, Vol. 33 No. 1

"Construction of a new library for Brooklyn College required that the collections and staff move out of the existing library building. This move into temporary quarters necessitated that the library close its stacks. The author describes how the staff planned, implemented, and managed an on-site as well as an off-site paging system for approximately one million volumes."

"Paging a library collection: the Brooklyn College Library experience"
Miriam Deutch
Collection Building, Vol. 20 No. 1

"The paper analyses the organization of the new product development process at FIAT from a resource-based perspective. The focus is on organizational resources for integrating dispersed specialist knowledge required in the development of complex products. The analysis shows how the application of a resource-based perspective is able to uncover negative long-term effects of outsourcing on the knowledge base (hollowing out), despite beneficial short-term effects on cost."

"Organizing new product development: knowledge hollowing-out and knowledge integration – the FIAT Auto case"
Markus C Becker and Francesco Zirpoli
International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 23 No. 9

Case studies are much used in business education, but the difference between case studies for teaching purposes and for publication is that in the latter case, you need to be sure that:

• the research behind your conclusions is rigorous;
• you can demonstrate not so much teaching points as issues of relevance for research and practice, and that fellow members of your particular community will find this particular case of considerable importance and apply lessons that they can learn in their practice.

The case study is one of a range of techniques which is used in business and management studies, as well as social studies and related fields – some others are experiments, surveys, and historical reviews. The case study differs:

• from the experiment in that the investigator is not in control of the variables;
• from the survey in that it seeks to generalize from the particular rather than draw specific conclusions from a wide range of data;
• from the historical review in that while it also draws a lot from documents, it can also use the tools of direct observation and structured interviews which are not normally possible in a historical review.

And it can use a range of evidence including:

• primary and secondary documents;
• direct observation and systematic interviewing.

It is this use of a range of evidence which makes it a particularly powerful way for looking at contemporary problems in a range of disciplines.

"The research method used is the case study approach. The case study method allows the researcher to investigate a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident, and in which multiple sources of evidence are used (Yin, 1989). Case studies provide a special way of collecting, organizing, and analyzing data to gather comprehensive, systematic, and in-depth information about each case of interest. The case study method allows people being interviewed to describe experiences in their own language, rather than the researchers'. The case study method is the most appropriate method for this research because it is capable of handling both qualitative and quantitative data (Eisenhardt, 1989; Marshall and Rossman, 1989; Yin, 1989). A characteristic of case study research is the combination of data collection methods, such as interviews, questionnaires, and observations, discussed in the next section."

"A case study assessment of performance measurement in distribution centers"
Chun-Ho Kuo, Kimberly D. Dunn and Sabah U. Randhawa
Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 99 No. 2