Case study in sport management research

This chapter highlights that ‘‘case study’’, the term itself, has multiple

meanings. It can be used to describe a unit of analysis/a choice of what is to be

studied (Stake, 2000), which aims to describe and explain the phenomenon

of interest (Zucker, 2001) or to describe a research method (Yin, 1994;

Creswell, 1998; Scapens, 1990). This chapter argues that the use of case

study as a research method, not a methodology, depends on both the nature

of the research that could be descriptive, illustrative, explorative, evaluative,

or explanative (Yin, 1994; Scapens, 1990) and the methodology (philo-

sophical assumptions) that is used by the researcher (Scapens, 1990).