What Is a Case, and What Is a Case Study?

Hervé Dumez ()
Additional contact information
Hervé Dumez: CRG I3 - Centre de recherche en gestion i3 - X - École polytechnique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - Université Paris-Saclay - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Case study is a common methodology in the social sciences (management, psychology, science of education, political science, sociology). A lot of methodological papers have been dedicated to case study but, paradoxically, the question ‘‘what is a case?'' has been less studied. Hence the fact that researchers conducting a case study are sometimes surprised by what they are experiencing. The paper deals with the problem: Why is a real case study more puzzling than expected, having read the literature on case study? We assume that the answer lies in a paradox: despite what is suggested by the double singular ‘‘case study'', a case study requires a comparative approach. This paper addresses the three fundamental issues one must tackle when doing a case study: What is my case a case of? What is the stuff that my case is made of? What can my case do? (or what do cases do?)

Keywords: Methodology; Case Study; Qualitative Analysis; Méthodologie; Étude de cas; Analyse qualitative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-06-17
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Bulletin de Méthodologie Sociologique / Bulletin of Sociological Methodology, 2015, 127 (1), pp.43 - 57. ⟨10.1177/0759106315582200⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01502620

DOI: 10.1177/0759106315582200

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().