When I first became interested in in-depth case-study research, I was trying to understand how power and rationality shape each other and form the urban environments in which we live (Flyvbjerg, 1998). It was clear to me that in order to understand a complex issue like this, in-depth case-study research was necessary. It was equally clear, however, that my teachers and colleagues kept dissuading me from employing this particular research methodology. ‘You cannot generalize from a single case’, some would say, ‘and social science is about generalizing. ’ Others would argue that the case study may be well suited for pilot studies but not for full-fledged research schemes. Others again would comment that the case study is subjective, giving too much scope for the researcher’s own interpretations. Thus the validity of case studies would be wanting, they argued. At first, I did not know how to respond to such claims, which clearly formed the conventional wisdom about case-study research. I decided therefore to find out where the claims come from and whether they are correct. This chapter contains what I discovered.

The Perseus Digital Library, (PDL) is one of the primary digital resources for the humanities. Under continuous development since 1987, the project has included an ongoing evaluation component that aims to understand the effects of access to digitized source materials in the humanities. A summary of the PDL genesis and current status is given and the multifaceted and longitudinal evaluation effort is described. A brief synthesis of results is provided and reflections on the evaluation along with recommendations for DL evaluation are given. Introduction Digital libraries marry the missions, techniques, and cultures of physical libraries with the capabilities and cultures of computing and telecommunications. Evaluating digital libraries is a bit like judging how successful is a marriage. A lot depends on how successful the partners are as individuals as well as the emergent conditions made possible by the union. All three entities---the two individuals and the gestalt union--are of cou...

doi 10.1287/mnsc.1070.0712

Organizations are occasionally faced with technology-based and accident-triggered crises that may cause costly disasters if not handled properly. Questions arise: How should organizations, with their complex processes and human involvement, be designed if they are to perform well in such crises? Would organizations benefit from structural changes during crises? From a neo-information processing perspective that views organizations as composed of cognitively restricted, socially situated, and task-oriented actors, we argue that the causes and consequences of crises may be better understood through the systematic examination of both environmental and organizational factors. We address our research questions using a rather unique approach: a matched analysis of 80 real organizational cases and 80 computer-simulated organizations. The findings show that a crisis can present critical challenges to organizational performance both externally and internally, and that there is no design guarantee that a high-performing organization will continue to perform well during a crisis situation. In addition, when organizations restructure to adapt to crisis situations, they often face the serious challenges of having to understand not only the external environment, but also organizational design traps. Key words: organizational performance; organizational design; computational modeling; real-crisis cases Whether theories of organization can be applied to nonconventional events or crisis situations has largely been assumed but certainly not fully explored (Carley

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The purpose of this research project was to explore congruency between teacher professional judgment and professional action as constructs of disposition. Three cases of mentor/beginning teacher dyads were used as informants for the study and were chosen based upon their involvement in a DPPE (Deliberate Psychological and Professional Education) program. Each informant’s disposition was measured in terms of his or her professional judgment and professional action. Professional judgment was conceptualized in terms of three domains a) teacher’s moral/ethical judgment as representative of democratic values, b) teacher’s ego judgment as representative of self-understanding, and c) teacher’s conceptual/reflection judgment as representative of evidenced-based decision-making and facilitator of instruction. Professional action was described as observable trends in behaviors that correspond to the same three judgment domains, moral/ethical, ego, and conceptual reasoning. The parameters for gathering data were set around a cycle of assistance in which each dyad of mentor/beginning teacher was engaged. The purpose of the cycle was to allow the beginning teacher to identify a specific teaching behavior (i.e., lesson planning, higher order

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies. Keywords: case study; case selection; critical cases; validity in case studies When I first became interested in in-depth case-study research, I was trying to understand how power and rationality shape each other and form the urban environments in which we live (Flyvbjerg, 1998). It was clear to me that to understand a complex issue such as this, in-depth case-study research was necessary. It was equally clear, however, that my teachers and colleagues kept dissuading me from employing this particular research methodology. “You cannot generalize from a single case, ” some would say, “and social science is about generalizing. ” Others would argue that the case study may be well suited for pilot studies but not for full-fledged research schemes. Others again would comment that the case study is subjective, giving too much scope for the researcher’s own interpretations. Thus, the validity of case studies would be wanting, they argued. At first, I did not know how to respond to such claims, which clearly formed the conventional wisdom about case-study research. I decided, there-

www.elsevier.comrlocaterdsw The impact of new manufacturing requirements on production line productivity and quality at a focused factory

“Fiabilité et résilience comme dimensions de la performance organisationnelle” Guest Editors: Erik Hollnagel, Benoît Journé et Hervé Laroche.