This clear, straightforward textbook embraces the practical reality of actually doing fieldwork. It tackles the common problems faced by new researchers head on, offering sensible advice and instructive case studies from the author’s own experience. Barbara Czarniawska takes us on a master class through the research process, encouraging us to revisit the various facets of the fieldwork research and helping us to reframe our own experiences. Combining a conversational style of writing with an impressive range of empirical examples she takes the reader from planning and designing research to collecting and analyzing data all the way to writing up and disseminating findings. This is a sophisticated introduction to a broad range of research methods and methodologies; it will be of great interest to anyone keen to revisit social research in the company of an expert guide.

Designing the Study

Designing the Study

When the decisions have been made about the phenomenon to be studied, and the predecessors have been found, or found missing, the time has come to answer in detail the question: How is the study to be conducted? This chapter presents a review of several options, based on examples of well-known works.

Cases, windows, sites

Case studies have been around as long as recorded history and today they account for a large proportion of books and articles in psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, political science, education, economics, management, biology, and medical science. (Flyvbjerg, 2011: 302)

When I refer to a case study in this text, I mean a study of the occurrence of a phenomenon – a chain of events, usually limited in time, usually ...

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