Designing, writing-up and reviewing case study research- an equifinality perspective Agencement
Design/methodology/approach – Based upon a review of seminal articles and textbooks, different paths to rigorous case study research are identified. Subsequently, these paths are compared with existing practices in case studies in service research published between March 2017 and April 2019.
Findings – Seminal articles and textbooks detail different paths to achieve rigor with regard to research purpose, design, data, analyses, and write-up. Overall, the most popular paths in the service community are those proposed by Eisenhardt and Yin. Meanwhile, service researchers increasingly challenge the dichotomy between the inductive and deductive logic by choosing an abductive logic. Transparency and reflexivity are the main points of attention among service researchers doing case study research.