Pluralism and Case Study

The case study would seem to promise a high degree of pluralism. It is a very flexible and versatile research strategy that provides researchers a diverse range of options in regard to research designs; data sources; methods of analysis; and, above all, philosophical approaches to ontology and epistemology. Yet an analysis undertaken by Rebecca Piekkari, Catherine Welch, and Eriikka Paavilainen of case studies that were published by four key journals in the field of international business in the period from 1995 through 2005 found that the potential for diversity and pluralism was not exploited. Instead, a single type of case study predominated: Authors stated their research objective to be exploratory; data were largely sourced from interviews; and the research design was based on multiple rather than single cases, investigated at a single point in time. In contrast, explanatory, theory-testing, ethnographic, longitudinal, or single-case case studies were rarely found.

Positivistic assumptions underlie the dominant form of case study in international business journals, although most authors did not explicitly acknowledge their philosophical stance. Perhaps they were not aware of it, considering that even the few authors who were expressly interpretivist nevertheless revealed positivistic tendencies. positivistic assumptions are also well represented in the methodological literature on the case study. Such an approach to the case study advocates multiple case designs over single case studies, because replication is seen to enable more robust theories. This tradition favors a “design” logic, in which field work commences only once a detailed blueprint has been specified. Multiple data sources are encouraged as a form of triangulation, which allows the research to converge on a single explanation. Positivistic authors are also variable oriented in their approach; in other words, they regard case studies as the exploratory stage in the scientific quest to arrive at generalizable causal laws that specify the relationship between variables regardless of context. In the study noted earlier, Kathleen Eisenhardt and Robert Yin were found to be the most commonly cited methodological authorities.

However, other perspectives on the case study can be found in the methodological literature, even though these may not have been utilized by practicing case researchers—at least not in the field of international business. These alternative voices often identify with interpretivist or critical realist philosophies and challenge each of the tenets of positivistic case research. Gibb Dyer and Alan Wilkins criticize the multiple case study by arguing that it can only arrive at a surface view that does no more than augment existing theory, given its thin description and lack of context. They defend the single case study for its paradigm-challenging potential. Also, the design logic associated with positivistic assumptions has been questioned by Charles Ragin, who argues that what the case is “a case of” can be determined only during the course of the research. In his view, relating the case to theory is an iterative process. Although there is broad agreement that multiple data sources are a strength of the case study, interpretivist authors are likely to maintain that this is not because they allow for convergence on a single explanation but rather that they uncover, as Robert Stake notes, the multiple—even conflicting—emic understandings held by the actors of the case themselves. Furthermore, the positivistic, variable-oriented approach has been challenged by critical realists such as Alexander George and Andrew Bennett, for whom the strength of the case study lies in its ability to develop contextualized explanations, and by interpetivists such as Robert Stake, for whom the goal of social science is verstehen (understanding) rather than erklären (explanation).

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