Designing for impact: the effect of rigor and case study design on citations of qualitative case studies in management

Abstract

One of the most highly cited papers in management is Eisenhardt’s (Acad Manag Rev 14(4):532–550, 1989) piece on the importance of case study research, in particular multiple cases (versus single cases), for theory building. We focus on this distinction between multiple versus single cases in the context of rigor and impact of management case studies (N = 173) published during the period 1996–2006 in Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal. We find that this distinction of multiple versus single only crudely captures the reality of case study designs in published article. For this we propose an alternative empirical classification of case study design that is replication and non-replication, in which case studies using a replication logic either in single cases (e.g. comparing teams within an organization, where the case is the organization) or, indeed, multiple cases (e.g. comparing teams across multiple organizations) are more rigorous and also more impactful than cases who do not use replication logic. However, unlike in quantitative research, rigor is not a driver of article citations in qualitative studies. In this regard, our finding makes important contributions to scientrometric research by discussing criteria under which different case study designs can be rigorous and impactful.