Collective case study method and fractal geometry: Instrumental and intrinsic cases in organizational research

In case study methods of organizations, researchers are often limited to the aggregation of individual cases within the context of the organizational case. Borrowing from Stake's (1995) use of instrumental and intrinsic case studies, this paper presents a fractal geometry case study method. For the purposes of this article, on site interviews of seventeen librarians who work in a research institution were conducted to learn more about their experiences with organizational change. Instrumental case studies of these individuals, or rather those cases that respond to other phenomena, were performed and analyzed at the micro level. A clustering technique, serving as a fractal seed, was also incorporated to draw out themes that highlighted the interconnections of individuals. These cases were then recursively integrated into an emergent framework of the intrinsic case of the organization. The use of this method suggests that observations of individuals, and the subsequent meaning they generate at the micro level, reflect the complex interconnections of these cases. At the same time, this method suggests that the recursive integration of individual cases contributes to the understanding of the complex organization at the macro level. Introduction Case study research methods of organizations have been debated with some frequency in the social and behavioral sciences. In addition to the case findings, epistemologica! differences are represented in the disparate approaches performed by case study researchers. Moreover, there are ontological differences between case studies thought to be traditionally scientific and those case study methods that are purely qualitative. As an example, some scholars approach case study research as a means to generalize the findings of a case or a collection of cases to the population at large. Arguing that this must be avoided in qualitative research, however, Stake (2005) focuses primarily on the specificity of cases and how their uniqueness contributes to further understanding. "Case study has been too little honored as the intrinsic study of a valued particular, as it is in biography, institutional selfstudy, program evaluation, therapeutic practice, and many lines of work" (Stake, 2005: 448). In case study methods of organizations, researchers are often limited to the aggregation of individual cases within the context of the organizational case. Conversely, narrative research methods are often chosen to focus on the individual but may sometimes lack coherence in their connection to the case of the organization. Borrowing from Stake's (1995) use of instrumental and intrinsic case studies, this article presents a complexity science research methodology, using a fractal lens for case study method. For the purposes of this article, on site interviews of seventeen individuals who work in an academic unit of a research institution were conducted to learn more about their experiences with organizational change. Instrumental case studies of these individuals, or rather those cases that respond to other phenomena, were performed and analyzed at the micro level. A clustering technique, serving as a fractal seed, was also incorporated to draw out themes that highlighted the interconnections of individuals. These cases were then recursively integrated into an emergent framework of the intrinsic case of the organization. It is the purpose of this paper, therefore, to show how this fractal case study method suggests that observations of individuals, and the subsequent meaning they generate at the miero level, reflect the complex interconnections of these cases. At the same time, this method highlights the recursive integration of individual cases and how they contribute to the understanding of the complex organization at the macro level as a fractal form. Theoretical Orientation The theoretical orientation of this paper draws from the scientific and social sciences research of complexity theory while grounding qualitative case study method in the works of Stake (1995, 2005, 2006). …