Interview with Arch Woodside on Case study research: theory, methods and practice, by Arch Woodside

Abstract

As discussed in this interview, Case study research: theory, methods and practice looks at the research processes involved in conducting methods including: participant observation; fuzzy set social science; decision systems analysis; forced metaphor elicitation technique; ethnographic decision tree modeling; mapping strategic thinking; the historical method; storytelling research; and, conversational analysis. Example case studies are both international and interdisciplinary and as varied as golf tourism, and household gardeners buying and using seeds plants, to an Austrian corporate business-to-business brand, and a multinational electronics firm with headquarters in New York City. This book reviews and applies the best classic and contemporary contributions to literature on case study methods from several disciplines providing strong rationales for adopting case study research methods alone or in mixed-methods. It addresses the principal criticisms of case study research as well as offering new definitions and applications of theories and techniques and proposing advances in the field. The diverse coverage found in this title not only features well-known theories and practices but is not afraid to examine valuable but little-used case data analysis techniques such as degrees of freedom analysis. It offers a depth of explication and demonstration of techniques and theories not found in other publications.