Mastering the Research Designs for your Qualitative Case Study: More an art than a science?

About

Why this course?

At its core, a research design is a basic strategy that guides the entire research process, from data collection, analysis, interpretation and discussion of results; it even determines the role of prior literature and the choreography of crafting a theoretical contribution. But it is much more than simply a descriptive chronological sequence: research design (or, better: designing research) is about engaging in difficult trade-off decisions that will inevitably present themselves in any empirical research. Quantitative research enjoys fairly standardized reporting conventions, with clear guidance re. transparent, reliable, and ultimately rigorous data collection and analysis procedures, all the way down to the very structure of the final report (e.g., Appelbaum et al., 2018). Research designs for case studies are much less codified. Part of the problem is that the two use different criteria for assessing rigor, and that these criteria have been studied separately for decades, with only limited cross-fertilization (e.g., Aguinis et al., 2019, Gibbert et al., 2008; Gioia et al., 2013). And yet, rigor matters especially in qualitative research as a predictor of article citation impact (Hoorani et al., 2019).

As such, the basic premise of this course is a conundrum: one of the weaknesses of case study research is that it tends to be ‘messy’, which is why we need a clear research design. At the same time, the strength of case study methods is that they are ‘flexible’, i.e. allow for a variety of designs, and even accommodates changes of the research design along the way, in iterative cycles of data collection and analysis (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005; Yin, 1994; Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Gerring, 2007). But don’t such changes to the research design in the signature ‘iterative cycles’ contribute even further to the overall messiness of case-study research (design)? In the end, all this sounds like research designs are more like an art than a science…

The neuralgic problem, therefore, of case study research is its designs. I believe that a certain versatility is needed when it comes to designing case study research along the way, i.e. before and even during the entire research process, from empirical data collection and analysis to write-up and responding to reviewer comments. I like the label research ‘design’ (from the latin designare , to ‘mark out, point out; devise; choose, designate, appoint) as it essentially implies a creative act. I therefore prefer to see the ‘design’ of research-design more like a verb than a noun, and nowhere would the need for active, creative (re-) designing of research be more appropriate than in qualitative methods.

The versatility needed to cut through this conundrum, in my experience, stems only from a minimum level of sophistication in using individual designs both in isolation and in combination. And this sophistication is based on a deep understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of individual designs in terms of quality criteria from nomothetic and idiographic approaches. This course therefore starts off with an introduction to, and application of, individual research designs be they exploratory or explanatory (days one through four), with a strong emphasis on their strengths and weaknesses in view of answering a given research question. The final day is then dedicated to balancing strengths and weaknesses across designs by combining different designs, and we use two generic pathways for illustration, an inductive strategy and a deductive strategy.

What we will do: Pedagogy and Performance Evaluation

The sessions are divided into two main parts. In the first part, we introduce the relevant designs for the day. I have tried to group designs in ways that make sense to me, thus two clusters of exploratory designs and two of explanatory. Each cluster is again subdivided in terms of commonalities and differences underlying basic designs. In the second part, we apply the tool both to existing material (published articles) as well as to your own research project. Participants will be not be required to do the ‘theory’ readings in preparation of each class. Instead, we will explore them on a rolling basis in the sessions. We will practically work in small groups with specific methodological approaches during class, always with an eye on their own (PhD- or other research-) projects. The emphasis in the group work is learning from the best (and sometimes, apparently ‘worst’) practices published in reputable journals.

Participants are required, though, to participate actively in the group work, both as (a) presenter and (b) discussant. Performance evaluation of the group work is on a rolling basis and will be done during the regular course hours. Individual performance is assessed both during the course as well as after the course. During the course, please be prepared to answer direct questions re. the applicability of the designs we study to your own research project. After the course, you will be required to write an individual assignment (topic TBA).

N.B. that this course is specifically on qualitative research design, including upstream implications (role of prior theory) downstream implications for data collection (e.g. via interviews, archival material, participant or direct observation, ethnography), analysis (be it with or without the help of software such as Atlas.ti, NVivo, internet-based, video-based), and the write-up and structure of the final report. At the same time, it does not engage in the actual practice of individual data collection or analysis strategies, for which there are separate courses at the summerschool. The focus is squarely on qualitative research design and the important trade-off decision it entails for qualitative researchers. The focus on qualitative methods also precludes an exploration of mixed (qualitative and quantitative) methods as well as hybrids such as qualitative comparative analysis (QCA).

On the Pedagogue: Who am I and how did I end up teaching this course?

I am professor of marketing at the faculty of communication, culture, and society at the Universita' della Svizzera Italiana at Lugano, and was previously associate professor at Bocconi University in Milan. I did my Ph.D. research at St. Gallen University based on a case study of Siemens’ corporate strategy. Thus, my background is in management in general and strategy in particular. The work at Siemens (where I was an employee) research triggered my interest in qualitative research, as I didn’t know how to do a case study ‘well’ (i.e. rigorously). My methods prof. also didn’t seem to know so we ended up writing an article together. methodological research was published in Journal of World Business, Organizational Research Methods, Scientometrics, Strategic Management Journal, as well as several books with Wiley and Blackwell including a forthcoming manual by Cambridge University Press. In the various fields of interest, I enjoy working in research teams and use different methods. Thus, for instance, my marketing research uses quantitative, lab-based methods, and is published in Journal of Consumer Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Industrial Marketing Management. Research on product innovation management uses survey studies (including meta-analyses) and is published in Journal of Product Innovation Management, Research Policy, as well as practitioner journals such as the MIT Sloan Management Review and the Wall Street Journal. I am a great fan of the Lugano Methods Summerschool and have had my first encounter (as a Ph.D. student) in 2002; I’ve been teaching in the summerschool since 2007.

**The Summer School cannot grant credits. We only deliver a Certificate of Participation, i.e. we certify your attendance.**

If you consider using Summer School workshops to obtain credits (ECTS), you will have to investigate at your home institution (contact the person/institute responsible for your degree) to find out whether they recognise the Summer School, how many credits can be earned from a workshop/course with roughly 35 hours of teaching, no graded work, and no exams.

Make sure to investigate this matter before registering if this is important to you.

Course leader

Michael Gibbert is a Full Professor of Marketing at the Institute of Marketing and Communication Management (IMCA) at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI).

Target group

graduate students, doctoral researchers, early career researchers

**The Summer School cannot grant credits. We only deliver a Certificate of Participation, i.e. we certify your attendance.**

If you consider using Summer School workshops to obtain credits (ECTS), you will have to investigate at your home institution (contact the person/institute responsible for your degree) to find out whether they recognise the Summer School, how many credits can be earned from a workshop/course with roughly 35 hours of teaching, no graded work, and no exams.

Make sure to investigate this matter before registering if this is important to you.

Course aim

Detailed schedule

Day 1 – Exploratory Designs I.: Thick Descriptions, Grounded Theory and Revelatory Cases (Geertz, Miles & Hubernan, Gioia Yin)
Agenda

A common distinction specifically for qualtiative methods is into exploratory and explanatory research designs. What are the similarities and differences also with regard to other (quantitative methods)?
Exploratory designs rely on thick descriptions, grounded theorizing and exploratory/revelatory/critical cases. What are the underlying commonalities/differences and strengths/weaknesses behind these approaches?
A main distinction for exploratory designs is that they explore either causes or outcomes of some phenomenon, what is the basic logic behind the two variants, how to implement either?
Theory

Geertz, C. (1973). Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, New York: Basic Books, pp. 3–30
Glaser, B. & Strauss, A., 1967. The Discovery of Grounded theory. Chicago: Aldine Press.
Gioia, D. A., Corley, K. G., & Hamilton, A. L. (2013). Seeking qualitative rigor in inductive research notes on the Gioia methodology. Organizational Research Methods, 16(1), 15‐31.
Langley, A., & Abdallah, C. (2011). Templates and Turns in Qualitative Studies of Strategy and Management. In D. D. Bergh & D. J. Ketchen (Eds.), Research Methodology in Strategy and Management (Vol. 6, pp. 201–235).
Gehman, J., Glaser, V. L., Eisenhardt, K. M., Gioia, D., Langley, A., & Corley, K. G. (2018). Finding Theory–Method Fit: A Comparison of Three Qualitative Approaches to Theory Building. Journal of Management Inquiry, 27(3), 284–300.
Blatter, J. & Haverland, M., 2012. Designing case studies: Explanatory approaches in small-N research. Palgrave Macmillan.
Pratt, M. (2008). Fitting oval pegs into round holes, Organizational Research Methods, 11 (3) 481-509.
Application

Siggelkow, N. (2001b). Evolution toward fit. Administrative Science Quarterly, 47(1), 125-159.
Valikangas, L, Hoegl, M., & Gibbert, M. (2009). Why learning from failure isn’t easy (and what to do about it): Innovation trauma at Sun Microsystems. European Management Journal, 27(4): 225-233.
Christianssson, M.K., Farkas, M.T., Sutcliffe, K.M., & Weick, K.E. (2009). Learning through rare events: Significant interruptions at the Baltimore & Ohio railroad museum. Organization Science, 20(5), 846-860.
Delmestri, G., & Greenwood, R. (2016). How Cinderella became a queen: Theorizing radical status change. Administrative Science Quarterly, XX, 1-44.
Day 2 – Exploratory Designs II.: Contextual Explanations, Ethnography, and Process Studies (Lévi-Strauss, Langley, Burgelman)
Agenda

The phenomeon of interest is (for better or worse) surrounded by a a particularly wild and strange beast called ‘context’ – what is the role of context in exploratory designs – how do you co-exist with this beast?
Context sensitive research designs such as Ethnography and Process Studies have important commonalities that have downstream implications for ensuing stages of the research process including data collection and analysis. What are these commonalities and how can researchers act on the implications? Even more importantly, what are the differences in terms of various incarnations of process studies?
The role context plays in qualitative research designs can be distinguished by reference to those that actively seek to ‘control’ context (i.e. those that are afraid of the strange beast) and those that use it for a (theoretically and practically infinite) sourse of alternative explanations. How do we cope with all these alternative explanations?! What are the many ways to skin this cat?
Theory

Nair L.B. (2018). The ethnographer. In A. Consterdine, Research Engagement in 55 Words (Flash Fiction): Metamorphosis. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 15 (271).
Stoller, P., Olkes, C. (1986). Bad sauce, good ethnography. Cultural Anthropology (1)3, 336-352
Popper, K., (1959). The logic of scientific discovery :Routledge.
Johns, G. (2017). Incorporating context in organizational research. Academy of Management Review. 42(4), 577-595.
Langley, A. (1999). Strategies for theorizing from process data. Academy of Management Review, 24(4), 691-710.
Pettigrew, A. M. (1992). The character and significance of strategy process research. Strategic Management Journal, 13(S2), 5-16.
Geddes, B. (1990). How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get: Selection Bias in Comparative Politics. Political Analysis, 2, 131-150
Application

Sex, writhes, and videotape. The Economist, May 3rd, 2014.
Sadeh, L.J., & Zilber, T.B. (2019). Bringing together: Emotions and power in organizational respsonses to instutitional complexity. Academy of Management Journal 62(5), 413-443.
Yok, L, & De Rond, M. (2013). On the plasticity of institutions: containing and restoring practice breakdowns at the Cambridge University boat club. Academy of Management Journal 56(1), 185-207.
Rerup, C, Feldman, MS (2011) Routines as a source of change in organizational schemata: The role of trial-and-error learning. Academy of Management Journal 54(3): 577–610.
Jarzabkowski, P, Lê, JK, Feldman, MS (2012) Toward a theory of coordinating: Creating coordinating mechanisms in practice. Organization Science 23(4): 907–927.
Day 3 – Explanatory Designs I.: Single Cases, Controlled comparison, Natural Experiments, and Single-Embedded Cases (Gerring, Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens, Yin)
Agenda

In stark contrast to exploratory designs, their counterpart ‘explanatory’ designs seek to, well, ‘explain’ variations across units of analysis, that is, they are based on finding differences among otherwise similar phenomena.
The first cluster of explanatory designs’ main commonality is that they typically focus on one, single application context. But wait, how can you ‘explain’ something (let alone a causal relationship) with a sample of N=1?! The trick is to focus on units of analysis within some case or context (remember the beast). We explore (and hopefully explain) the important upstream implications for the treatment of context as well as the similarities and differences across units of analysis.
A main distinction is into the ‘case’ of interest (i.e. the ‘main’ unit of analysis and (where relevant) sub-units of analysis (so-called ‘embedded’ units). In other words, there are (at least) two levels of analysis What are the ramifications of this distinction when it comes to data collection and analysis?
Theory

Nobel committee. Natural experiments help answer important questions. https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2021/10/popular-economicsciencesprize2021-3.pdf
Gerring, J. (2004). What is a Case Study and What Is It Good for? American Political Science Review, 98(2), 341-354.
Slater, D., & Ziblatt, D. (2013). The Enduring Indispensability of the Controlled Comparison. Comparative Political Studies. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1177/0010414012472469.
Gibbert, M., Ruigrok, W., & Wicki, B. (2008). What passes as a rigorous case study? Strategic Management Journal, 29, 1465-1474.
Eisenhardt, K.M. (1989). Building theories from case study research. Academy of Management Review, 14 (4), 532-550.
Hoorani, B. H., Nair, L. B., & Gibbert, M. 2019. Designing for impact: The effect of rigor and case study design on citations of qualitative case studies in management. Scientometrics, 121(1): 285-306.
Application

Yin, R.K. (2004). The case study anthology. London: Sage. Chapter 3.
Giacomelli, S., Gibbert, M., Vigano, R. (2018). Community empowerment for managing wild boar: a longitudinal case study of northern Italy 2001–2018. Ecology and Society, 23(4), 12.
Galunic, C., & Eisenhardt, K. (2001). Architectural innovation and modular corporate forms. Academy of Management Journal, 44(6), 1229-1249.
Markus, M.L (1983). Power, Politics, and MIS Implementation. Communications of the ACM, 26(6), 430-444.
Cuganesan, S. (2017). Identity paradoxes: how managers and employees negotiate similarity and distinctiveness over time. Organization Studies, 38(3-4) 489–511.
Day 4 – Explanatory Designs II. Multiple Cases, Comparative Cross-sectional vs. Longitudinal and mixed Designs (Eisenhardt, Gioia, Yin, George & Bennet)
Agenda

Explanatory approaches can also involve (controlled) comparison multiple cases (and even multiple units of analysis within cases). The underlying logic is called ‘replication logic’ and it comes in two forms, literal and theoretical replication. What are the commonalities, differences, and implications for validity and reliability?
What is the difference between covariational and process studies? How to analyze process studies – what is the role of time in longitudinal research, and what constitutes a ‘longitudinal’ study in the first place?
Where to draw the line between cross-sectional and longitudinal research designs? How to position ‘mixed’ (i.e. cross sectional as well as longitudinal) designs?
Theory

George, A.L, Bennet, A. (2005). Case studies and theory development in the social sciences. MIT Press
Langley, A., & Abdallah, C. (2011). Templates and Turns in Qualitative Studies of Strategy and Management. In D. D. Bergh & D. J. Ketchen (Eds.), Research Methodology in Strategy and Management (Vol. 6, pp. 201–235). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Gioia, D. A., Corley, K. G., & Hamilton, A. L. (2013). Seeking qualitative rigor in inductive research notes on the Gioia methodology. Organizational Research Methods, 16(1), 15‐31.
Langley, A. (1999). Strategies for theorizing from process data. Academy of Management Review, 24(4), 691-710.
Gibbert, M., & Ruigrok, W. (2010). The What and How of case study rigor: Three strategies based on published work. Organizational Research Methods,13 (4), 710-737.
Application

Grant, R. M. (2003). Strategic planning in a turbulent environment: Evidence from the oil majors. Strategic Management Journal, 24(6), 491-517.
Eisenhardt, K. M.; Bourgeois III, L. J. (1988) Politics of strategic decision making in high-velocity environments: Toward a mid-range theory. Academy of Management Journal, 31(4): 737-770
Naq, R., Gioa, D. (2012) From Common to Uncommon Knowledge: Foundations of Firm-Specific Use of Knowledge as a Resource. Academy of Management Journal, 55(2): 421-457.
Deligianni, I., Voudouris, I., & Lioukas, S. (2015). Growth paths of small technology firms: The effects of different knowledge types over time. Journal of World Business, 50 (3), 491-504.
Snihur, Y. and Zott, C. (2020) The Genesis and Metamorphosis of Novelty Imprints: How Business Model Innovation Emerges in Young Ventures. Academy of Management Journal, 63(2), 554-583.
Day 5 – Combining Research Designs for Theory Building: Inductive-deductive and Deductive-Inductive (Nair, Gibbert, Hoorani)
Agenda

You won’t get published unless you produce the somewhat infamous ‘theoretical contribution’. There are basically two ways of doing this, one inductive and one deductive.
How these strategies actually work out in practice in qualitative methods is very much in the eye of the beholder. The inductive strategy is generally seen as somehow more attractive, so even articles that are outright deductive to the trained eye out themselves as inductive. So where does one draw the line? I.e. how does one get one’s qualitative research published?
As a way out of this conondrum, I propose to see the two strategies as a kind of dual-track system, where it is not either-or but rather how do you start (inductively or deductively) and how to you arrive at your destination? From a practical perspective this means we combine the individual research designs (which we have appreciated over the last four days).
Theory

Nair, L, Hoorani, B., Gibbert, M. (2022). Combining case study designs for theory building. Cambridge University Press
Gibbert, M., Nair, Lakshmi Balachandran, Weiss, M., Hoegl, M. (2020). Using outliers for theory building. Organizational Research Methods, 1-10
Gerring, J. (2007). Techniques for choosing cases. In J. Gerring Case Study Research (pp. 97-108 i.e. from extreme case until and including deviant case).
Cornelissen, J., Höllerer, M. A., & Seidl, D. (2021). What Theory Is and Can Be: Forms of Theorizing in Organizational Scholarship. Organization Theory, 2(3), 26317877211020328.
Sullivan, C. J. (2011). The utility of the deviant case in the development of criminological theory. Criminology, 49(3), 905-920.
Application.

The birdmuda triangle. The Economist, February 2nd, 2013.
Zott, C., & Huy, N.G. (2007). How entrepreneurs use symbolic management to acquire resources. Administrative Science Quarterly, 52(1), 70-105.
Doz, Y. (1996). The evolution of cooperation in strategic alliances: Initial conditions or learning processes. Strategic Management Journal, 17(special issue), 55-83.

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