استفاده از مطالعات موردی کیفی در مجلات مدیریت و کسب و کار برتر: یک تجزیه و تحلیل کمی از الگوهای اخیر  The use of qualitative case studies in top business and management journals: A quantitative analysis of  recent patterns

1. Introduction Qualitative case studies are an established research method that has been used since the dawn of the social sciences (George & Bennett, 2005: 5). Case studies are applied extensively in several subject areas, including psychology, sociology, history, economics and management (Yin, 1994). A qualitative case study can be defined in many ways; two wellknown definitions are a “detailed examination of an aspect of a historical episode to develop or test historical explanations that may be generalizable to other events” (George & Bennett, 2005: 5) and “an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context; when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident; and in which multiple sources of evidence are used” (Yin, 1994: 13). Many well-known and established theories in the field of management stem from qualitative research grounded in case studies: for example Penrose’s theory of the growth of the firm (1959), Chandler’s theory of the firm (1977), Johanson and Vahlne’s theory of incremental internationalization (1977) or, more recently, von Hippel’s theory on user-related innovation (1988). Case studies have in fact the merit of enabling theory building and development more than quantitative research approaches (Tsang, 2014); or, in the words of Gephart referring to qualitative research, to which case studies belong, it “often advances the field by providing unique, memorable, … and theoretically meaningful contributions to scholarly discourse …” (2004: 461). Another important merit of qualitative case studies lies in their capability of explaining complex connections between phenomena and their contexts (Dubois & Gadde, 2002). In addition, case studies offer the opportunity of adopting and matching different forms of data, enabling a more indepth understanding of a phenomenon (McCutcheon & Meredith, 1993), which is particularly important in the field of management, where some specific managerial processes are otherwise very difficult to investigate (Guercini, 2004; Voss, Tsikriktsis, & Frohlich, 2002). Despite these merits, in the 1960s and 1970s, qualitative case studies experienced a decline in favour of statistical and formal methods (George & Bennett, 2005). Even if produced by the same academic institutions, quantitative research is viewed as more “scientific” (Gummesson, 2006: 171) and qualitative research as lacking rigor (Pratt, 2008). As a result, some authors (Hannah & Lautsch, 2011) argue that the management field is being dominated by quantitative methods.