5. Conclusions, limitations and further research suggestions
This paper analysed 352 articles containing qualitative case studies published in the years between 2002 and 2011 in the 20 top management and business journals. We now explicitly address our research purpose and the research questions we posed earlier. Concerning the paper's main purpose, that is, to investigate to what extent case studies are published in top journals, our findings show that there is no clear trend in the examined top journals towards more extensive use of case studies between 2002 and 2011. On the contrary, the results show that the share of case studies over the total number of articles in mainstream journals tends to decrease between 2002 (5.3%) and 2011 (2.8%) or, at least, oscillates. With an average percentage of only 3.7% over the total articles published, cases studies are certainly not a preferred research method for publishing in these journals. Looking journal by journal, the share of case studies varies between 0.2% and 11%. Therefore, for most of these mainstream journals, case studies are more an exception than the rule: one journal even publishes no case studies (Personnel Psychology). Interestingly, the Journal of Operations Management, the journal with the highest share of case studies over its total articles, only has 11%. These results suggest that qualitative cases are far from becoming a dominant research method in mainstream management studies. In this sense, the claim by George and Bennett (2005) about a revival of case study methodology after the dip in the 1960s and 1970s cannot be confirmed by looking at the 20 top management and business journals.
