Positive bias

The type of case studies I have show a positive bias. People and organisations that are interested enough to agree to be case studies tend to engage with each other on their IT projects, and to perceive their projects and their relationships with their consultants and suppliers as successful. Those that don't engage, or don't perceive their projects or consultant-client relationships as successful, have not participated.

Squaring the circle

I'm delighted to receive feedback from a research participant to whom I sent a case study write up. She hadn't seen something the way I had and welcomed my feedback, telling me what she could have done, things I hadn't thought through, and thus useful feedback, because I'll incorporate it.

One reason that research participant hadn't seen things that way was because she was the sole primary client, rather than sharing the client role on a project board, so she had no one to bounce ideas off. In another case study, where a contact client saw something one way, and the consultant who was the project manager saw things in a different way, the consultant was able to share his observations with others, and thus bounced ideas off a fellow consultant on the project board. He in turn worked with someone else on the project board to get done what had to be done.

Of course one of the things when you write up a case study is worrying that perhaps you'll show a research participant in a bad light, so I worry in that second case study that perhaps I'm showing the contact client as worrying too much about detail, but then I don't know that perhaps he was right and in fact the people on the project board didn't have enough information to make informed decisions. On the other hand, it is the job of project board members to have the vision, and the contact client's job was to know the detail, so there's no criticism of anyone.

Indeed, what I've got is the variety of perspectives that I set out to get. And the variety shows me that when some participants can't make the connections that afford engagement, engagement via two other connections can square the circle to get the job done.

Case study approach

I have use case studies because:

• a case study approach "allows the investigator to take advantage of emergent themes and unique case features"{Eisenhardt, 1989 }
• a case helps understand the different views of people working on the same project, their "claims, concerns and issues" {Guba, 1989 : p184}. The context is the constant and the participants are the variables.
• a case study allows organisation of data around the themes of IT and the public sector

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EISENHARDT, K. M. (1989) Building Theories from Case Study Research. Academy of Management Review, 14, 532-550.
GUBA, E. G. & LINCOLN, Y. S. (1989) Fourth Generation Evaluation, Newbury Park, CA; London, Sage.

Writing case studies

Writing isn't easy. Remember having to write an essay of two thousand words? It was hard to write those assignments three years ago as I studied my Masters in Research Methods. Then there was the thesis of 15,000 words for which we had about three months to do it.

Three weeks ago at a supervisory meeting I agreed with my supervisors that I needed to get them a write up of a case study, one that I'd written up against a framework of social capital, not against engagement. Each case study takes around three or four weeks to produce, and since I'd written up others, I thought I could do this last one in three weeks. At the same time, I have to start working on cross case comparison and analysis. Then I realised that I'd got two case studies to write up against engagement. Oh dear.

But hey! I've written them both in three weeks. I'm so pleased, and so surprised because that's something like 11,000 coherent words in three weeks. If I can write like that for the

• introduction (5000)
  
• literature review (12000)
  
• methodology (12000)
• cases (12000)
• cross case analysis (12000)
• findings (12000)
• contribution and conclusion (5000)
  

then may be I can write my dissertation by September, all 70-80,000 words of it.

Just don't expect me to blog at the same time.

Case studies summaries

I now have some usable cases, all of them concerning IT projects or programmes in the public sector. Two case studies are central government, two on an island, one local government, one a non-department public body (i.e funded from public money, like in these lists), three are projects, two are programmes of projects, two use a single consultant for only a few months and one is really complex. I have enough to analyse.

I've already written each case study against the framework, so can show how the presence of those elements of engagement combine to form conditions from which value emerges in the form of:

• new knowledge
• new social and intellectual capital
• saving money
• easier project completion because of avoiding pitfalls, or getting out of the pit when fallen into
• reduced pain of implementation, due to engagement with each other

Representative qualitative research

I was thinking about how to judge the goodness of my qualitative research - see chapter 10 of Miles and Huberman.

Are my informants representative? They are to some extent self-selected in that their organisation's management accepted my approach asking to research them. The management then suggested which IT project or programme to study. In that sense, the informants didn't volunteer, though the organisation did. So informants and organisations may not be representative.

But representative of what? They are representative case studies of successful IT projects, not failures. That's clear because:

1. the organisations made the cases available - I'd assume they'd not make failures so available
2. several of the cases have been submitted for awards
3. the pride is in the words and terms that the informants use

Informants tended to be articulate and elite in management, but outliers were available for interviews at very short notice, such as a clerk, a techie chap and a data input person. So does that mean I've got something representative - both management elite and operational grade informants?

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Miles & Huberman in Miles, M. B. and A. M. Huberman (1994). Qualitative Data Analysis : An Expanded Sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications.

Cccc-cold!

This is the cold view from my nine-windowed study corner. It's pretty, but I'm pretty cold.

Case selection

To investigate the phenomenon of engagement I need a collection of instrumental case studies. It would be nice to have a formal sample, because I might expect that such samples would represent some population of cases {Stake, 2005 #1371}. But the sample size I have is "too small to warrant random selection". So I have a purposive sample instead, a variety that represents different types of organisation, different IT projects and different types of third parties (consultants, suppliers, contractors). So I've chosen cases that seem to offer opportunities to learn and because these cases are accessible.

The other thing my cases seem to have in common is something successful about them - the participants are proud of their work.

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STAKE, R. E. (2005) Qualitative case studies. IN DENZIN, N. K. & LINCOLN, Y. S. (Eds.) The Sage handbook of qualitative research. London, Sage Publications.

Intrinsic and instrumental case studies

Intrinsic and instrumental interest in cases matters according to what you are researching

• Intrinsic - because you want to understand this particular case better
• Instrumental - I examine the case to provide insight into an issue. The issue I'm interested in is engagement in relationships therefore my cases are instrumental. Hence, I can study a number of cases jointly. so I have ..
• Multiple or collective case studies because I'm investigating the phenomenon of engagement and how it can add value or help to deliver value. "It's instrumental study extended to several cases" says Stake.

"It would be interesting to know the details of what IT system the organisation was implementing"

commented a supervisor on a paper I wrote on a case study. But in reply, I must point out that this is not an intrinsic case study, but an instrumental case, one of a collection of cases to investigate the phenomenon of engagement and as such, whilst it would indeed be interesting to know technical details, that information does not explain the phenomenon and so those details are not relevant. Furthermore, if including such details makes it easier to identify the participating organisation, it is better to leave them out.

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STAKE, R. E. (2005) Qualitative case studies. IN DENZIN, N. K. & LINCOLN, Y. S. (Eds.) The Sage handbook of qualitative research. London, Sage Publications.
in DENZIN, N. K. & LINCOLN, Y. S. (Eds.) (2005) The Sage handbook of qualitative research, Thousand Oaks ; London, Sage Publications.

Type of case study

Stake identifies different kinds of case study:

• intrinsic
• instrumental

I think there are others, but this information systems research site mentions just two.

Recommended by third party monitor, when I was talking about needing to provide more information than I wanted on a case study - that wasn't relevant and argument for not providing it because the kind of case study I needed for what I'm researching and what I'm interested in.

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STAKE, R. E. 1995 The Art of case study research, Sage.

Written, not just in my head

I've written up a case study - only short, only a description of the case, no analysis or comment, under the headings:

• Background
  
• Project description
• Interviewees
  
• Project actors
  
• Project outcome
• Case discussion:Structural social capital, Relational social capital, Cognitive social capital
• Consequences

It probably won't be right for my supervisors. I'll have to write it again. And again. And again. But at least I've got something written, so it's out. Not in my head.

Getting the message through

Had supervision today. It wasn't great. Supervisor number 1 is into nag-about-access-mode, worrying that I haven't any more case studies yet. I daren't assure her that I have access until it happens, so I don't give her best case scenarios, but let her worry along with me.

Then neither of them were happy with my writing, "muddled" they said it was and too note-like. I've used bullet points - they said at the last meeting to use bullet points - but it's not good enough because I need to join up the bullet points and the quotes with explanations. And layout the setting more clearly and describe the actors more clearly. And write the story more clearly.

The day after I'd sent the paper to them I had an insight to something in the case study that showed how a missing client-consultant engagement at tactical level was overcome through good consultant-consultant engagement and consultant client engagement at strategic level. When I told them that idea, supervisors liked it, though I thought it analytical and they'd told me to write descriptively so I'd not have included it in this paper.

Case study chapter drafted

My supervisors have given me feedback on the chapter I've written on the first case study. One comment they made was this first case study might not be a typical project. They're right I suspect.

They also suggested that when I write up the next case study I include under each dimension of social capital a paragraph on pre-conditions. That's interesting because projects when run under PRINCE2 for example, don't consider pre-conditions and history of team members. Methodologies are so formal compared to what social capital is.

Case study 2 write up is next - onwards and upwards!

Perhaps.

Can't write

I'm stuck writing with many thoughts but not on paper, starting with getting a structure to write up one case study fully. Supervisors want at least one case written in the next month, if not two and it's hard because I can't get the structure right, though I do have the beginnings of an idea. I'll start with:

• setting
• characters
• structural dimension of social capital
• relational dimensions of social capital
• cognitive dimensions of social capital
• relationships between the dimensions

Still stuck.