The case study method in family business research: Guidelines for qualitative scholarship

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Abstract

In this article, we provide guidelines that are useful to family business researchers when deciding whether and how to use case studies as well as to reviewers and editors when evaluating case study work. Drawing on examples from our published qualitative research and the complementary insights from other case study work in the field, we offer general suggestions for choosing the case study design, defining the unit of analysis, selecting cases (sampling), collecting information, analysing information, presenting results and ensuring validity and reliability in research findings. By outlining the most important and distinctive challenges faced by qualitative researchers of family business and establishing the relevance and usefulness of the case study method for generating new and valuable insights into family businesses, this article attempts to move the family business field beyond its current state, encourages scholars to engage in the case study method in high-quality family business research, and suggests important implications for scholars, reviewers and editors of case studies in the family business field.

Introduction

As family business researchers who frequently work with qualitative data, we are often asked to give seminars on how to conduct qualitative research and review qualitative papers. Through these experiences, we have deemed that there is widespread misunderstanding about the range of roles that qualitative data can play in research on family business and how qualitative methods should be used to generate high-quality and publishable research on family business.

Among qualitative methods, case studies play a particularly important role, as they represent one of the most adopted qualitative methods in organisational studies (Eisenhardt, 1989) and have been acknowledged as an approach to generating and testing theory that has provided the mainstream management field with ground-breaking insights (Burgelman, 1983, Chandler, 1962, Penrose, 1960, Pettigrew, 1973). Moreover, case studies have been the most used qualitative methodology in family business research to date (De Massis, Sharma, Chua, Chrisman, & Kotlar, 2012). To family business students and scholars unfamiliar with the case study methodology, there is often a misconception about what a case study is and how it can inform theory building and professional practice as a form of qualitative research. For example, in a doctoral-level introductory qualitative research methods course, we have listened to attendants describe their view of case studies as a suitable methodology that should be primarily used for descriptive purposes, mostly used in areas of nascent theory or to exclusively study individuals or specific historical events.

In our view, family business is a heterogeneous field that encompasses multiple theoretical approaches and levels of analysis, and we believe that diversity can and should be reflected in the way in which case studies are used. It is often observed that there is no accepted “boilerplate” for writing case study methods and determining quality (Amis and Silk, 2008, Bansal and Corley, 2012, Coffey and Atkinson, 1996, Maxwell, 2012, Pratt, 2009). This lack of understanding as to what makes “quality” research (Easterby-Smith et al., 2008, Gioia et al., 2012, Graebner et al., 2012) is unfortunate because papers that build theory from case studies are frequently considered the “most interesting” (Bartunek et al., 2006, Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007) and are also among the most impactful papers in the academic community (Eisenhardt, 1989). Consistent with the idea that case studies represent a method that is ideally suited to generating managerially relevant knowledge (Amabile et al., 2001, Leonard-Barton, 1990), we view case studies as a powerful methodology that can be used in a rigorous, creative and wide-ranging variety of ways to advance family business research. When the approach is applied as we suggest and in a robust way, it becomes a valuable method for family business scholars to describe complex phenomena, develop new theory or refine and extend existing theories. Our intended contribution in this article is to guide novice or experienced family business scholars who are interested in deepening their knowledge on case study research methods in appreciating the potential value of qualitative methods to enrich their research and in identifying the key elements of designing and implementing qualitative case study research projects. Our goal is to humbly attempt to provide some guidelines that are useful to family business researchers when deciding whether and how to use case studies and hopefully to reviewers and editors when evaluating case study work. An overview of the case study design is provided along with general suggestions for choosing the type of case study approach that is most appropriate for the research question, defining the unit of analysis, selecting cases (sampling), collecting information, analysing information, presenting results and ensuring validity and reliability in research findings. To facilitate the application of these principles, we draw on our own published qualitative studies and the complementary insights from other case study work in the field to provide rich and clear examples of the types of case study designs, research questions, sources of information, sampling techniques, study propositions, and data display frameworks. Specifically, we offer concrete examples of articles and exemplar quotes within these studies that are particularly illustrative of the ideas expressed in this article.

In this way, we hope to help move the family business field beyond its current state by establishing the relevance and usefulness of this particular qualitative research method for generating a richer and deeper understanding of family businesses. We also identify some areas in which we see special opportunities for the use of case study methods. A recent annotated bibliography of the 215 most cited family business studies from 1996 to 2010 has shown that only a scant minority of articles (18) relies on case studies or other qualitative methodologies (De Massis et al., 2012). We hope that this article will encourage an increasing number of scholars to engage in the case study method in high-quality family business research.

Section snippets

Choosing the case study design

A case study is a particular strategy for qualitative empirical research that allows an in-depth investigation of a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context (Pettigrew, 1973, Stake, 1995, Yin, 2003). Case studies are particularly relevant to organisation and management studies because they promote “understanding the dynamics present within single settings” (Eisenhardt, 1989, p. 533) by using a variety of lenses, which allows for multiple facets of the phenomenon to be revealed and

Defining the unit of analysis

Once the case study method has been chosen, a very important step in its application is choosing the unit of analysis (case). The unit of analysis can be defined as “a phenomenon of some sort occurring in a bounded context” (Miles & Huberman, 1994, p. 25). Family business scholars should start by asking themselves what their unit of analysis is; do they want to “analyse” the individual? A group of individuals? A process? A programme? A project within the firm? Differences between firms?

Selecting the cases (sampling)

With the case study method, a very critical decision is the selection of cases. Contrary to the sampling approaches typically adopted in quantitative research (e.g., random, stratified, or statistical sampling), cases are selected because they are particularly suitable for illuminating a phenomenon and for extending relationships and logic among variables, i.e., theoretical sampling (Eisenhardt, 1989, Graebner and Eisenhardt, 2004).

A first, critical choice for researchers is whether it is

Collecting information

Very often, researchers assume that case studies should only rely on qualitative data. This is clearly a misconception, as there are no empirical research methods that only use qualitative or quantitative data. Data in the case study method are collected by multiple means that may consist of potential qualitative data sources, such as interviews, direct observations, including ethnographical and anthropological data collection techniques, documentation, and historical records, as well as

Analysing information

In addition to following ordered and transparent data collection procedures, it is also important to analyse qualitative data systematically and explain the data analysis process. As for other qualitative methods, data collection and analysis often occur concurrently. An illustration is provided by our study of goal-setting processes in family firms:

We iteratively analysed the qualitative data by moving back and forth between the data and an emerging structure of [empirical evidence and]

Presenting results

A critical aspect of case study research is presenting the rich body of empirical evidence and results of the study. The presentation of results is a key challenge for qualitative family business scholars (Chenail, 2009), who too often produce manuscripts that are excessively long and result in massive, unreadable documents.

It is important to distinguish between two types of data to be displayed: the raw material and the synthetic evidence. The challenge of presenting the rich body of

Ensuring validity and reliability in research findings

There are four main criteria that have been adopted to assess the rigour and trustworthiness of case study research (e.g., Campbell, 1975, Eisenhardt, 1989, Gibbert et al., 2008, Gibbert and Ruigrok, 2010, Yin, 1981). Table 6 provides an overview of the four validity and reliability criteria and summarises the challenges, issues, and suggested research strategies that qualitative researchers may take for each criterion.

Construct validity refers to the extent to which a study investigates what

Conclusion

The purpose of this article was to provide some guidelines that are useful to family business researchers when deciding whether and how to use case studies and hopefully to reviewers and editors when evaluating case study work.

On the one hand, case study research offers family business scholars significant opportunities to contribute to the family business literature by advancing the theoretical understanding of family firms. This theoretical development will likely expand our knowledge on

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Editor-in-Chief, Joseph H. Astrachan, and the Assistant Editor, Torsten M. Pieper, for their editorial guidance, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and developmental feedback.

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