Triangulation in industrial qualitative case study research: Widening the scope

Case study research though increasingly popular in social sciences for positivist and intrepretivist research, a kind of confusion is prevalent when it is used ignoring its philosophical position. Arguably, the case study research is considered more appropriate for qualitative research because of its foremost strength ˗ the in-depth study of complex issues. This paper, drawing from the literature, discusses the philosophical position of case study research and argues that qualitative case study research is appropriate for theory building. For theory building, this paper follows the inductive approach guided by qualitative research paradigm and argues that it is not appropriate to assess theory building from the perspective of quantitative research. Very similar to other research methods, it is natural that the case study research has certain challenges; however, most of the challenges and misunderstandings overlap causing difficulty to understand the role of case study research. Hence, this paper aims to contribute to the understandings of the challenges and misunderstandings associated with the theory building from case study research. This paper argues that most of the challenges associated with theory building from case study can be addressed employing appropriate research strategies particularly clear understanding of philosophical stance and selection of appropriate case. The misunderstandings, on the other hand, are arisen due to the differences in the researcher’s perspectives particularly positivistic thinking of them rather than the shortcomings inherent in the qualitative case study research design.

Over the past 15 years, qualitative case study research has become more prominent in agricultural education. The first case study research appeared in the Journal of Agricultural Education (JAE) in 1997. To date, 33 qualitative case study research articles have been published in JAE. Additionally, case study research has become highly visible at regional and national conferences. However, planning, conducting, and reporting case study research is challenging due to the various approaches that exist. Furthermore, various philosophical assumptions underlie each unique approach. We use this article to provide building blocks of case study research designed to help novice researchers and reviewers make methodological decisions. Additionally, we provide recommendations for writers, reviewers, and teachers of qualitative research who desire to strengthen their understanding of case study research.

Misused and missed use — Grounded Theory and Objective Hermeneutics as methods for research in industrial marketing

Selecting and applying an appropriate theoretical model is essential in research development. To describe the use of the simplified teaching-meaningful learning (STML) model to guide a qualitative case study that explored the meaningful learning of students with diverse backgrounds at a training workshop for new software. The authors discuss how STML helped determine the qualitative case study's research question, gave direction to the choice of methods for collecting and analysing data, and built the context to interpret and discuss the findings. Using an appropriate theoretical model assists in the design and conduct of a qualitative case study that develops scientific evidence to understand students' meaningful learning of new technologies. The four steps of the model might be useful for researchers in designing and conducting other qualitative research in different subject areas in nursing and other disciplines.

In the last chapter it was noted that the manner in which market research is executed is a function of the needs and resources of the industrial organisation. Before embarking on a description of market research techniques it is useful to clarify the differences in emphasis between industrial and consumer market research as this influences the importance of the techniques used. These differences are adequately described by both Gordon1 and Hutchison,2 and the most important can be summarised as follows: 1 Consumer goods are purchased by members of the public whereas industrial goods are purchased on behalf of an organisation. 2 The industrial market researcher tends to require a knowledge of product technology. 3 The consumer population tends to be normally distributed and thus subject to sophisticated statistical analysis, whereas the industrial population is less numerous, and less easily categorised, and random samples are not likely to be representative of the total industrial population.

ObjectiveThis article identifies and explains the need for qualitative case studies of U.S. state‐level public policy and politics before providing researchers with a practical roadmap for how to proceed.MethodsWe first review relevant research from political science and sociology to establish the need for qualitative policy‐focused state‐level case study research. We then lay out a three‐stage approach for case study research design and data collection.ResultsWe find that qualitative case study research into state‐level politics and policy making is useful for developing original theories that move beyond those developed at the federal level, for distinguishing between states and state policies in ways that are not easily measurable, and for conducting research that attends to variation in the meaning of policy design within different state contexts. We further find that barriers to conducting such research can be reduced by following a three‐stage strategy that we elaborate.ConclusionState‐level policy making yields essential processes and outcomes that social scientists across disciplines want to understand. Relying exclusively on quantitative methods will result in incomplete knowledge acquisition. Qualitative case studies, while time‐consuming, are worthwhile and achievable. Researchers seeking to conduct this research can follow a three‐stage strategy to make the process more manageable.

Objective To explore the work content of nurses in menopause multidisciplinary outpatient team so as to summarize the nursing work well and improve the quality of nursing work. Methods This study used case study of qualitative research. From June 2018 to August 2019, we selected 10 relevant personnel in Menopause Multidisciplinary Teamwork (MDT) Outpatient Department at Beijing Shijitan Hospital of Capital Medical University to interview MDT outpatient nurses about the work content. Data were collected with the method of personalized depth interview and observation, and data were analyzed with the method of content analysis. Results A total of 5 themes were extracted by analyzing data including the MDT outpatient work flow management, comprehensive evaluation and diagnosis by interdisciplinary, menopause knowledge education for patients, formulating and implementing the plan of individualized continuous nursing as well as participating in MDT publicity, promotion and team development. Conclusions Nurses take part in effective flow management, comprehensive health evaluation, enriching menopause knowledge education, formulating and implementing the plan of individualized continuous nursing as well as MDT publicity, teaching and research in MDT outpatient work to make MDT outpatient flow simple and efficient, improve patients' health knowledge, medical compliance and satisfaction. Key words: Nurses; Menopause; Multidisciplinary teamwork; Outpatient Department; Work content; Qualitative research

This article introduces the concept of qualitative case study research as empirical inquiry. It defines and distinguishes what a case study is, the purposes, intentions, and types of case studies. It then describes how to determine if a qualitative case study is the preferred approach for conducting research. It overviews the essential steps in designing qualitative case study research, including the role of literature and theory, approaches for collecting data and analyzing it, as well as how to write up and present case study findings. It articulates how to avoid common pitfalls when engaging in qualitative case study research and concludes with the strengths and limitations associated with this form of empirical inquiry.

PurposeThis paper aims to present a bibliometric overview of the leading trends of the journals in industrial marketing during for 25 years. Thus, the purpose is to carry out an analysis about contributions that industrial marketing or business to business (B2B) marketing discipline has done for scientific investigation, presenting a ranking of the 30 most influential journals and their global evolution by five-year periods from 1992 to 2016. Moreover, this study presents the amount of citations, who quotes who from the top 15 ranking and self-citations.Design/methodology/approachThis study analyzes 3,587 documents classified as articles, letters, notes and reviews from Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science for the period 1992- 2016, by bibliometric indicators such as H-index, total citations (TC), total papers (TP), TC/TP. Furthermore, this paper develops a graphical visualization of the bibliographic material by using the visualization of similarities viewer software for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks in leading journals, publications and keywords with bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis.FindingsIndustrial Marketing Management is the leader of the ranking, representing 34 per cent of the total manuscripts considered in this study. The most influential journals were classified by periods of five years and the top five for the period 2012-2016 were in ascending order: Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, Journal of Business Research and Journal of Marketing. Therefore, in this last period, the considered specialized journals of industrial marketing have increased the quantity (TP) and quality (better H-index) of marketing contributions. The main node on the keywords was of “business-to-business marketing.” The most frequent keywords were “industrial marketing,” “trust,” “business-to-business,” “B2B,” “relationship marketing” and finally “electronic commerce”.Practical implicationsThe information presented in this paper is useful to academics, publishers, academic institutions and other interested groups in industrial marketing because it makes available a global and current picture of this discipline that could be used to make decisions about publishing strategies and journal position.Originality/valueThis study aims to analyze the progress of industrial marketing discipline, reviewing the contribution of several scientific journals for 25 years. In fact, to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first quantitative study focused on the only purpose of ranking the most influential journals and keywords analysis using bibliometric techniques and networks theories.

Digital health is widely believed to have vast potential in improving patient care. MyHealthRecord (MyHR) is a digital health information system which enables Australian citizens to access their health information centrally, making it available anywhere, at anytime. The aim of this study is to explore the adoption of MyHR in general practices in Victoria and understand its impacts. A qualitative case study research method was used to underpin this investigation. Ten general practices were engaged where MyHR was implemented/used. Detailed interviews with MyHR implementers were held and GPs were engaged in short interviews. Twenty observations were made during GP/patient consultations for health summary uploads. Findings indicate that the practice incentive payment (PIP) funding policy change encouraged the use of MyHR, but the adoption was limited to satisfy funding criteria. Change management was often extemporised. Health summary upload was a quick and easy process but was influenced by clinical system data quality and GP familiarity with the system. Community awareness and GP interest in MyHR was lacking. The conclusion is that MyHR was not well integrated in general practices nor the community. As a result, an improved engagement approach between healthcare organisations, the MyHR system operator and Australians is required.

The objectives of this research are to study the accountability of NBTC. (Such as legal, administrative and public accountability). The study on the use of authority, the response and the factors that affect the accountability of NBTC. To contribute and develop the knowledge of accountability for organizations in Thailand. Using the qualitative case study research to collecting the information from using the documents and the websites for the data collection, participatory observation and in-depth interviewed for triangulation rule of methodology and data (Creswell, 2007) The results were analyzed using hybrid framework of accountability (Dubnick & Romzek, 1991) (that combines the institutional and virtue framework). The findings indicated that NBTC have more focus on formal accountability (authority, legislation, rules, and regulations) rather than the public accountability. Factors that most affect the accountability of NBTC. Such as the power of political and business influence from the interest groups or stakeholders including cultural factors that reflects the attitudes, beliefs, social norms of Thai people. That affect behavior and responsiveness of NBTC. They prosecuted against journalists and scholars in defamation cases for the academic perspective about their action, but also the minority of commissioners give priority of public accountability very seriously.

Quality control, and more specifically trustworthiness in qualitative research is a recurring issue which can be addressed through well-established research techniques. This paper focuses on how the creation of a tool called translation device to connect theory and data contributes to supporting trustworthiness in qualitative case studies. The translation device described in the paper is a tool commonly used in research studies working with the multidimensional toolkit called Legitimation Code Theory within educational sociology. After arguing for the necessity of such a device in qualitative research, the process of creating translation devices in two case studies are presented. The case studies focus on the development of higher education students' multimodal literacy in the context of exhibition visits. Insights are given into the data collection and analytical process of the case studies to illustrate how the translation device contributes to quality control on multiple levels.

Case study research is a widely-used approach in qualitative research. The advantages of case study research include its ability to investigate complex social phenomena and to handle dense data. However, it has several drawbacks, such as defining the case and ensuring rigour. The large variety in descriptions of case study implementation makes the application of case study research a challenge for novice and experienced researchers alike. The aim of this paper is to describe a novice’s foray into case study research, illustrating advantages, drawbacks, and applications of case study research through examples from a previously conducted case study. By mapping consistencies and differences in the case study descriptions, this paper offers a way for novice researchers to familiarize themselves with the range of case study perspectives and with the choices and considerations that must accompany the choice of case study research. This paper shows the definitional and structural challenges that case study researchers may face. We identified 14 descriptions of case study research with unclear or overlapping distinctions. Despite the large number of variations in case study descriptions, we singled out one main distinction: the distinction between multiple and single case studies. The sheer proliferation of how case study research should be conducted underlines the great responsibility case study researchers have when choosing an analytical and methodological approach and ensuring rigour in their research.

Industrial marketing management: Bibliometric overview since its foundation

The Contemporary Marketing Practice (CMP) research tradition has formulated and investigated a set of different marketing practices or archetypes ranging from transactional to relationship and network approaches. We identify gaps in previous research, and report on a case study in the house-building industry, which begins to fill these gaps. Specifically, we propose some amendments to the definition and detail of the marketing practices, arguing for example that e-marketing does not exist as a separate practice but rather that marketing practices are independent of the specific media and technology used at the customer interface. We also explore drivers and enabling factors of transitions between practices. Further case study research is called for in this domain.