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This chapter explores methodological aspects of designing a qualitative multi-case research study to examine the issues of citizen participation, new democratic forms of planning, and community tourism planning. The study discussed below took place during the months of June 2007–March 2008 in three North American communities – two in the United States and one in Canada. The purposes of the study were to compare and contrast the current practices of citizen involvement in community tourism planning with the framework of deliberative democracy, to expand the literature on tourism planning, and to contribute to the development of a model of participatory community tourism planning to be adopted by communities and planners pursuing tourism as a development tool. This chapter focuses on methodological intricacies of designing a qualitative multi-case research study, those wishing to explore the project more are referred to Grybovych (2008).

Chapter 2 describes how behavioral science research methods that management and marketing scholars apply in studying processes involving decisions and organizational outcomes relate to three principal research objectives: fulfilling generality of findings, achieving accuracy of process actions and outcomes, and capturing complexity of nuances and conditions. The chapter's unique contribution is in advocating and describing the possibilities of researchers replacing Thorngate's (1976) “postulate of commensurate complexity” — it is impossible for a theory of social behavior to be simultaneously general, accurate, and simple and as a result organizational theorists inevitably have to make tradeoffs in their theory development — with a new postulate of disproportionate achievement. This new postulate proposes the possibilities and advocates the building and testing of useful process models that achieve all three principal research objectives. Rather than assuming the stance that a researcher must make tradeoffs that permit achieving any two, but not all three, principal research objectives as, Weick (1979) clock analogy shows, this chapter advocates embracing a property space (a three-dimensional box rather than a clock) view of research objectives and research methods. Tradeoffs need not be made; having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too is possible. The chapter includes a brief review of principal criticisms that case study researchers often express of surveys of respondents using fixed-point surveys. Likewise, the chapter reviews principal criticisms of case study research studies that researchers who favor the use of fixed-point surveys express.

Case study research, most often associated with qualitative inquiry has gained significance as an effective approach to investigate complex issues in real-world settings. Conducting case research is considered to be appropriate when a contemporary phenomenon is to be studied. This chapter covers all related concepts, relating to this unique method of research. The focus is on bringing about rigor in case study research.

This paper reports the results of a three-year-long research on business relationships, relying on qualitative data gathered through multiple-case study research of four focal companies operating in Australia. The industry settings are as follows: steel construction, vegetable oils trading, aluminum and steel can manufacture, and imaging solutions. The research analyzes two main aspects of relationships: structure and process. This paper deals with structure describing it by the most desired features of intercompany relationships for each focal company. The primary research data have been coded drawing on extant research into business relationships. The main outcome of this part of the research is a five construct model composed by trust, commitment, bonds, distance, and information sharing that accounts for all informants’ utterances about relationship structure.

The introductory chapter includes how to design-in good practices in theory, data collection procedures, analysis, and interpretations to avoid these bad practices. Given that bad practices in research are ingrained in the career training of scholars in sub-disciplines of business/management (e.g., through reading articles exhibiting bad practices usually without discussions of the severe weaknesses in these studies and by research courses stressing the use of regression analysis and structural equation modeling), this editorial is likely to have little impact. However, scholars and executives supporting good practices should not lose hope. The relevant literature includes a few brilliant contributions that can serve as beacons for eliminating the current pervasive bad practices and for performing highly competent research.

This chapter reviews empirical studies into the relationship between management control, strategy and sustainability.

The review explores the theoretical frameworks and models used in previous empirical research as well as the research questions and methods applied to empirically explore this emerging research area.

Even if a growing body of empirical research has emerged over the last decade, our knowledge of how companies design or use management control to support sustainability strategy appears to be limited, providing considerable scope for further research.

This review structures the state of our empirical knowledge in the area of management control, strategy and sustainability and makes suggestions for future research paths.

Writers present very different descriptions of what constitutes ‘ethnography’ and ‘case study’. While not attempting to review the literature, nor to comment on or endorse the overall quality of argument and presentation of research methodology made by each of the authors considered here, the following demonstrates how different the explanations and definitions offered can be.

Case study research has been applied across numerous fields and provides an established methodology for exploring and understanding various research contexts. This paper aims to aid in developing methodological rigor by investigating the approaches of establishing validity and reliability.

Based on a systematic review of relevant literature, this paper catalogs the use of validity and reliability measures within academic publications between 2008 and 2018. The review analyzes case study research across 15 peer-reviewed journals (total of 1,372 articles) and highlights the application of validity and reliability measures.

The evidence of the systematic literature review suggests that validity measures appear well established and widely reported within case study–based research articles. However, measures and test procedures related to research reliability appear underrepresented within analyzed articles.

As shown by the presented results, there is a need for more significant reporting of the procedures used related to research reliability. Toward this, the features of a robust case study protocol are defined and discussed.

Many methodology sources suggest that a researcher should in advance frame the research project and make a choice among these options and should subsequently stick to his or her frame and choice. In this article a different, more natural, research trajectory design is presented which is labelled the “iterative theory‐building process”. The main feature of this approach is that research questions may be changed over time based on material collected and that research strategies, data collection and analysis methods and tactics should fit the (changing) research questions and process phases. The rationale of this “iterative theory‐building process” is explained and the strategies that can be chosen from the research trajectory design are further discussed.

Argues that because of the many inherent weaknesses of traditional empirical research, generative and case study approaches may be more useful methodologies for conducting research on quality management. Outlines ways in which the generative research model builds conceptual frameworks from the data provided by the target population itself in conjunction with a review of the literature, while the case study approach provides a much deeper and richer insight to the quality management practices of the company being investigated. Discusses the benefits and difficulties associated with case study research.