Combining Case Study Designs for Theory Building: A New Sourcebook for Rigorous Social Science Researchers

by Lakshmi Balachandran Nair, Michael Gibbert, Bareerah Hafeez Hoorani

Overview

Case study research is a versatile approach that allows for different data sources to be combined, with its main purpose being theory development. This book goes a step further by combining different case study research designs, informed by the authors' extensive teaching and research experience. It provides an accessible introduction to case study research, familiarizes readers with different archetypical and sequenced designs, and describes these designs and their components using both real and fictional examples. It provides thought-provoking exercises, and in doing so, prepares the reader to design their own case study in a way that suits the research objective. Written for an academic audience, this book is useful for students, their supervisors and professors, and ultimately any researcher who intends to use, or is already using, the case study approach.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781316519295
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/09/2023
Pages:	179
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

Lakshmi Balachandran Nair is Assistant Professor in the Department of Business and Management at LUISS Guido Carli University, Italy. Her research interests include qualitative methodology, business ethics, and organization studies. She has published journal articles, case studies, book chapters, and a book on these topics. For her work, she has received several awards and grants including the BAM Best Full Paper Award (2018) and the ECRM Teaching Research Methods Excellence Award (2019).

Michael Gibbert is Professor of Sustainable Consumption at The University of Lugano, Switzerland. He has more than twenty years of experience in teaching qualitative methods and has received numerous prizes at renowned conferences.

Bareerah Hafeez Hoorani is Assistant Professor of Qualitative Empirical Methods at Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on qualitative research methods and organizational identity. She has been recipient of numerous best paper awards at the British Academy of Management Conferences.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to case study research; 2. Building blocks of case study research; 3. Of talking pigs and black swans: single holistic case study design; 4. Do it again: the evidentiary basis of case studies is plural; 5. The natural experiment, aka the single embedded design; 6. Do it again (and again): multiple embedded case study design; 7. Sequencing case study designs: inductive-deductive; 8. More on sequencing case study designs: deductive-inductive; 9. A parting (optimistic) note.