Feagin, et al, define a case study as an in-depth, multi-faceted investigation, using mainly qualitative research methods, of a single social phenomenon (Feagin, Orum, & Sjoberg, 1991). They point out that the study is conducted in great detail and relies on the use of several data sources. A case study, in their view, allows for the researcher to examine social action (such as the social action of organisational incorporation of the internet based innovations into daily use) in its most complete form (ibid p. 9). During the project planning phase, secondary literature also remarked on the potentially significant disparity between higher education institutions; therefore, multiple-cases have been conducted in wide variety of settings are meant to afford greater generality of results (Lee & Baskerville, 2003). Holistic case studies can also involve the study of complexes of social meanings. A good case study can provide a full sense of actor’s motives that eventuate in specific decisions and events. The idea is to “get the reader up close” and, first, depict for them the perspective of the actors involved and, secondly, provide a systematic analysis for the reader to consider. Thereby data from ethnography (discussions, observations, etc.) as well as history complement the case narrative. Feagin goes so far as to state, “there is a type of precision […] in case studies that is more substantial than the quantitative analysis. The precision here is more substantial than the quantitative analysis. The precision is in the recording of social life as a meaningful whole, not as the sum of lifeless quantitative units”(ibid p. 12). In this line it can be argued that the results are more robust (in the sense of Gibbons and Nowotny). When smartly adopted to new scenarios, the results are rather actionable in other cases because they come out of a holistic assessment of real contextualised scenarios rather then from surveyed snap-shots.

Of course the question of reliability – understood as the ability to replicate the original study using the same research instrument and to get the same results – is relevant, and a particular possibly original stand on the matter is taken. It is often raised that qualitative research is, at best, descriptive and highly vulnerable to the idiosyncratic biases of the investigator. Hubert Blalock, a social science methodologist put the argument as such: “One of the fundamental difficulties with participant observation is that lack of standardisation usually involved. Each social scientist is like a journalist writing his own story; there is little guarantee that several such journalists will report the same story” (Blalock, 1970, p. 44). Several counter arguments can be made. The professionalism of journalistic work and reported facts as well as the validity and importance of diverse and heterogeneous perspectives can be stated. But on a more fundamental level two arguments can be proposed. First it can be argued that this traditionally evolutionary development of scientific paradigm has hampered the free creative innovation process necessary for scientific revolution in the Kuhnian sense. And that only the dissection of the traditional scholarly scientific methodology in private enterprises has made the so-called scientific revolution possible. If this is the case, a less methodologically regulated research environment might lead to a vastly more fertile and productive system for the social sciences. It seems more appropriate to develop a variety of theories and let the scientific discourse and practical validation of the knowledge claims decide about the potential of a theory to explain and describe a social phenomenon [i].

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[i]It could be argued in this context that fixation of social science methodology with natural scientific quantitative approaches has resulted in the vacuum of positive social theory.

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