Perspective—The Infeasibility of Invariant Laws in Management Studies: A Reflective Dialogue in Defense of Case Studies

Abstract

The author questions the possibility of establishing invariant laws for social phenomena and presents an argument for the case study method. Despite the many alleged advantages of the case study method, its validity remains in doubt. Various concepts and techniques have been developed to make the method rigorous enough to meet the stringent criteria of nomothetical social science, but it often fails to meet two of them: (1) reliability and replicability, and (2) external validity. Those two criteria can be met only when social researchers find an invariant law. The author examines whether those two criteria are really necessary and attempts to clarify the conditions under which they are relevant, that is, the conditions under which an invariant law can be discovered in social phenomena. He argues that the conditions are so stringent that the search for an invariant law should not be the main objective of management studies, and he contends that reliability/replicability and external validity are irrelevant not only for the case study, but for any method of management studies. Without those two criteria, the validity of the case study can be forcefully reasserted. The author concludes by suggesting that serious consideration be given to whether the objective of management studies should be changed from a search for invariant laws of practical use to the encouragement of reflective dialogue in society.