Supply Chain of Innovation

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CASE RESEARCH

Case research in operations management
Chris Voss, Nikos Tsikriktsis and Mark Frohlich
London Business School, London, UK
Keywords Operations management, Research, Methodology, Case studies Abstract This paper reviews the use of case study research in operations management for theory development and testing. It draws on the literature on case research in a number of disciplines and uses examples drawn from operations management research. It provides guidelines and a roadmap for operations management researchers wishing to design, develop and conduct case-based research.

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Introduction Case research has consistently been one of the most powerful research methods in operations management, particularly in the development of new theory. This is particularly true in today’s environment. To cope with the growing frequency and magnitude of changes in technology and managerial methods, operations management researchers have been calling for greater employment of field-based research methods (Lewis, 1998). Pure case research, that is research based on analysis of a limited number of cases to which, at best, only limited statistical analysis can be applied, is widely used in Europe but is less common in North American operations management (Drejer et al., 1998). Pannirselvan et al. (1999) reported case study and field study research accounted for 4.94 per cent and 3.80 per cent respectively of published papers. However, there are an increasing number of case research based papers appearing. There are several challenges in conducting case research: it is time consuming, it needs skilled interviewers, care is needed in drawing generalisable conclusions from a limited set of cases and in ensuring rigorous research. Despite this, the results of case research can have

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