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The contrast of multilevel and comparative research may seem counterintuitive at first. After all, one might argue that comparative research on organizations by necessity spans several levels of analysis (Rokkan, 1966). Yet, multilevel and comparative research on organizations present rather distinct traditions in organization studies, each with its own epistemological assumptions and associated methods. Accordingly, an approach that aims to incorporate both multilevel and comparative ideas needs to start with taking inventory of these prior literatures to situate itself. In the following, we thus turn to the literatures on multilevel and comparative research as different traditions with surprisingly little overlap.

This chapter provides a detailed account of the comparison-based case study approach and argues that traditional case study approaches should adopt the comparison-based case study model. This study outlines the benefits and drawbacks of the comparative case study design. The penultimate section provides an example of a comparison-based case study to illustrate the virtues and the shortcomings of this mode of research. The chapter concludes with suggestions to aid novice tourism researchers and postgraduate students.

This article compares inter-organizational (IO) interaction and inter-organizational information systems (IOS) to support IO interaction in public and private sectors. The purpose of the article is to explore and discuss differences and similarities between e-government and e-business focusing IOS and interaction. This is done in order to facilitate learning between the two fields. The point of departure is two case studies performed in private and public sectors.

A comparative study of two cases in two sectors (private and public) is conducted. IO concepts from industrial markets that characterize an IO relationship (continuity, complexity, symmetry, and formality) and concepts that describe dimensions of such relationships (links, bonds, and ties) are used as analytical lenses. The empirical case study data, mainly generated from interviews, have been analyzed in a qualitative, interpretive way, using these central IO concepts from industrial markets (the IMP approach). This approach is in line with a strategy to use theory as a part of an iterative process of data collection and analysis.

The findings in the present study show that there are several similarities concerning interaction in relations between organizations in the two sectors. There are also differences depending on the level of analysis (empirical level vs analytical level). The study shows the need to be explicit regarding organizational value, end-customer or client/citizen value and the type of objects that are exchanged in the interaction. This is presented in the article together with suggested refinements of the analytical framework used for understanding IO interaction. The latter finding is a contribution to the general field of interaction and network studies and also a contribution to the e-government field.

This article is a point of departure to facilitate learning between the public and the private sectors focusing on IO relations and IOS. Learning between the two sectors is needed for researchers in the two areas as well as policy makers and practitioners developing e-government interaction and IOS.

There are few articles addressing learning between the private and the public sector within the e-government area. Not at least when focusing IO issues. There is also a tendency that wheels are reinvented in the sectors and in the e-government research area. An important initiative in this article is to contribute in filling this gap by providing examples of a comparative analysis as well as understanding of how to perform such analyses of IO interaction.

Comparativists have been struggling with understanding the field of Comparative and International Education (CIE) for over 60 years. Analyses of CIE knowledge production meet at least three limiting factors: questions of what should be constituent themes of the field (or “nodes” to structure analysis); how to code individual manuscripts as belonging to one comparative field and not another (e.g. should a manuscript be coded according to its geographic focus, its methodology, educational focus, or all three?); and then finally, how to deal with knowledge production that is not published through recognized Journals or publication outlets. I use 100 submissions to the Comparative Education Review (CER) in 2015 as a way to deal with the latter constraint, suggesting that such analysis may reflect new trends in the field. Further, to deal with other constraints, I have coded each manuscript according to its methodology, geographic focus, theme, type of manuscript (e.g. single case or comparative), and author characteristics (location of author). In reviewing the submissions, I find that the field as seen from the perspective of the CER submissions is dominated by single case studies (58%), and that quantitative studies (41%) are becoming increasingly more prominent. The studies mostly are focused on higher education (32%) and secondary education (21%). Authors in majority (61%) are based in the area studied. As regards themes, there seem to be no unity or grand narratives in the field. Despite interesting new trends as related to location of authors, CIE appears dominated by fairly traditional and conservative discourses as related to themes and epistemologies.

Comparative organizational analysis once dominated American organizational sociology, grounded in rich case studies about organizational processes and outcomes. The Columbia school's approach to organizational research was exemplary in this regard. Following the publication of Robert K. Merton's (1940) essay, “Bureaucratic Structure and Personality,” he attracted a group of talented doctoral students to his formal organizations seminar (Crothers, 1990), the core of whom would go on to write dissertations, books, and articles forming the substance of American organizational sociology in the decades to come. Among those students were Philip Selznick, Alvin Gouldner, Peter Blau, Seymour Martin Lipset, Rose Coser, and James Coleman. While their work varied greatly in substantive content, their studies shared a theoretical interest in explaining intra-organizational dynamics and the unexpected outcomes of bureaucratic administration. Organizations, they demonstrated, developed “lives of their own,” quite outside the intents of their founders (Haveman, 2009; refer, especially, Selznick, 1957). Organizations, in other words, were adaptive to the needs of their constituents, but adaptations did not always produce the intended results. One of the unintended consequences of organizational development was increasing variety in the kinds of organizations that emerged to meet particular societal goals or ends. Thus, an inherent focus of this early comparative research was the explanation of variety in organizational types, policies, and outcomes and an emphasis on the ways in which organizations diverged from ideal types.

Construction defects in residential buildings are causing significant impacts both on consumers and the industry. As a consequence, several countries have established new home warranty schemes. However, designing a public policy for domestic building warranties can become a difficult task. In fact, many of these programs in the past have failed, collapsed or gone bankrupt. Therefore, the purpose of the current research is to provide a systematic comparative representation of various active programs internationally.

The methodology relied on a multiple-case study research design. The case selection covered a total of nine jurisdictions with compulsory home warranty programs. Those included Japan, France, United Kingdom, three provinces in Canada (Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta), and three states in Australia (New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland). The study applied a data collection protocol to gather all the evidence in a replicable manner for each individual case. Subsequently, a cross-case analysis was conducted to identify similarities and variations between programs.

The findings unveiled institutional practices that aimed to resolve, compensate, or rectify defects in residential constructions within these countries. The review mostly suggested that every home warranty program presents certain unique characteristics. At the end, this paper proposed an analytical illustration representing the diversification of components adopted by each jurisdiction.

Nowadays, there is still not a consensus within the academic community on what is an optimal solution when conceiving a new home warranty program. Hence, the current study aims to fill this knowledge gap by presenting the plurality of methods employed by several countries. This paper seeks to help policy makers and industry leaders to improve their home warranty scheme based on awareness derived from observations and analyses of what has been accomplished elsewhere in the world.

In this exploratory multiple case study, we aim to compare the internationalization of two state-owned enterprises (SOEs) owned by subnational governments with three owned by central governments in Latin America. This study provides a contextualized answer to the question: What are the differences in the internationalization of subnationally owned SOEs compared to central SOEs? This study finds that the speed and diversification of these two types of SOEs’ internationalization differ because they have a different expansion logic. Subnationally owned SOEs have a gradual and diversified expansion following market rules. Central government’s SOEs are specialized and take more drastic steps in their internationalization, which relates to non-market factors.

This study builds an exploratory qualitative comparative case analysis that uses multiple sources of data and information to develop a comprehensive understanding of SOEs through process tracing.

The study posits some assumptions that are confirmed in the case analysis. This study finds relevant differences between sub-national (SSOEs) and central authority (CSOEs’) strategies. SSOEs’ fewer resources and needs to increase income push them to follow a gradual market-driven internationalization and to diversify abroad. CSOEs non-gradual growth is justified by non-market factors (i.e. national politics). CSOEs do not diversify abroad due to the broader set of constituencies they have to face.

Given the exploratory comparative case study of this research, the findings are bounded by the particularities of the cases and their region (Latin America). This paper and its findings can be useful for theory building but it does not claim any generalization capacity.

This study adds complexity into the SOEs phenomenon by distinguishing between different types of SOEs. This paper contributes to the study of subnational phenomena and its effect in SOEs’ internationalization process, which is an understudied topic. To the authors’ best knowledge, this is among the first studies that explore subnational SOEs in Latin America.

The purpose of this research is to examine why communities facing the same disaster recover differentially and determine pathways to successful disaster recovery in the research setting of New Orleans neighborhoods affected by Hurricane Katrina. While previous studies suggest that there are a variety of pathways to recovery, a broader cross-case comparison is necessary to generalize these pathways into a recovery framework. Specifically, this study seeks to determine what pre-disaster and post-disaster causal factors, alone or in combination, were important to recovery following Hurricane Katrina.

This paper presents a cross-case comparative study of neighborhood-level recovery. Based on prior work, which used the Delphi method to determine hypothesized causal factors and indicators of recovery, data was collected through publically available sources, including the US Census, the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and previously completed studies for 18 damaged neighborhoods. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis was used due to its ability to analyze both quantitative and qualitative data for smaller case studies.

The results show that there are multiple pathways combining pre-disaster community factors and post-disaster actions that led to recovery, as measured by population return. For example, economic capacity is nearly sufficient for recovery, but a combination of low social vulnerability, post-disaster community participation, a high proportion of pre-World War II housing stock and high amounts of post-disaster funds also led to recovery.

This research uses a novel method to link pre-disaster measures of resilience and vulnerability to recovery outcomes and, through cross-case comparison, generates results that will enable researchers to develop a theory of sustainable community recovery.

The aim of this chapter is to introduce a methodology that enables researchers to employ a set of systematic comparative tools and techniques in their multiple case study research that allow them to move from drawing loose comparisons towards a more formalised type of analysis, while simultaneously paying attention to within-case complexities. This methodology stands between the qualitative and the quantitative methods and helps researchers to build middle-range theories (Mjoset, 2001) from small to intermediate numbers of cases. This methodology encompasses a number of techniques including crisp and fuzzy set-theoretic qualitative comparative analyses, which have been used in a wide range of social science disciplines. However, these techniques have not received sufficient attention from higher education scholars.

Recognizing the difficulty inherent in studying organizational change stimulated by the external environment, this paper seeks to present a four‐phase model useful for collecting information and for analyzing the impact of organization‐environment dynamics.

In the context of a case study of academic health centers, a research methods model is offered with four phases: case study; comparative case study; experimental/quasi experimental; and meta analysis. This four‐phase methodology relies on varying information styles and data streams within the context of exploratory, comparative, and large dataset analysis.

The synthesis of research approach highlights the strengths, weaknesses, and the linkage to system thinking in theory and in practice and are illustrated by the case.

Mixed methods approaches are increasingly sought and used in multi‐disciplinary research and applied settings. The model is useful for examining the multiple effects of the organization environment on a wide range of industries, with medical/health care demonstrated here.

Few models of mixed methods approaches exist – this one synthesizes existing approaches incorporating many types of “data”.