In the case study performed by Kantar (Page 654, in the textbook) do you agree or disagree with the use of mix methods? Could using a single method yield the same results? Explain your answer.

Kantar (1977) describes her research at Indsco as a case study of a single organization. Kantar describes how, over a five-year period, she spent time as a consultant, participant-observer, and researcher at Indsco Supply Corporation. Her sources of data included:

a postal questionnaire survey, taking 23 hours to complete, of 205 sales workers and managers out of a population of 350;

semi-structured interviews with the first 20 women to enter the sales force;

access to a survey of employees on attitudes towards promotion;

content analysis of 100 performance appraisal forms;

group discussions with employeesfrom managers to secretaries, recorded verbatim;

participation in meetings;

participant observation in training programs;

internal reports, memoranda, and public documents relating to personnel policies;

conversations in offices, at social gatherings, or in peoples homes.

Overall, Kanter suggests that she spent over 120 personal contact days on-site, and the number of people with whom she held conversations was well over 120. A further 500 people participated in written surveysthe primary source of quantitative data used in the study. Kanter draws attention to the potential for generalizability from a single case, by suggesting that the case provided material out of which to generate the concepts and flesh for giving meaning to the abstract propositions I was developing (1977: 332). Although Kanter does not claim statistical generalizability for her data, she does draw attention to the way that she used the data from the case to generate concepts that could be transferred to other organizational contexts. Hence she states that, after having formulated her initial impressions about Indsco, she had conversations with informants in three other large corporations in order to satisfy myself that Indsco . . . was not particularly unique in the relationships I observed. I learned that Indsco, indeed, was typical, and its story could be that of many large corporations (1977: 332).

In addition, the combined use of qualitative and quantitative research methods represents a common pattern in case study research in business and management, used by researchers in order to enhance the generality of their findings. An illustration of this tendency is given in Research in focus 25.6, where Kanter (1977) describes the diverse range of methods that she used in her case study of a single organization, Indsco Supply Corporation. Even though the fieldwork was undertaken in just one company and the case constituted a focus of interest in its own right, Kanter claims that its findings are typical of other large corporations. However, it is more than coincidental that she makes this claim only after having accounted in some detail for the complex set of methods that were involved in her mixed methods research approach. Other studies have attempted to counter the criticism of anecdotalism that is levelled at qualitative research by introducing a quantitative aspect into their analysis. These include Bryman, Stephens, and A Campos (1996) study of leadership in the British police force and Gabriels 1998 study of organizational culture (see Chapter 24), both of which calculate the frequency of themes in order to provide a sense of their relative importance. However, Silverman warns that such quantification should reflect research participants own ways of understanding their social world. If this occurs, the quantification is more consistent with the goals of qualitative research.