The Role of Context in Qualitative Case Study Research: Understanding Service Innovation

Case study research designs are a popular approach in business and management and in work-based research projects. Case study as an umbrella research methodology, under which a researcher adopts different methods for data collection and analysis, is a particularly useful approach for research projects concerned with an in-depth investigation of a particular phenomenon within a specific real-life context. The context in case study research plays a key role and a researcher needs to carefully consider the choices of “case” or “cases” in terms of value and uniqueness. The role of the researcher as an embedded researcher is also important as case study research offers a degree of understanding of the context under study that can only come from personal experience and involvement. There are many approaches to case study research; this SAGE case study presents and discusses a case study research design using qualitative methods for data generation such as participant observation, direct observations and interviews (with individuals and in group) to investigate the implementation of a service innovation process. This research approach was found useful, as the outcome of the study was intended to be an in-depth understanding of the service innovation process (the phenomenon) that was embedded within the context-specific settings of a small business services firm (the context).