Hello All,
Thanks for your posts addressing some of difficult issues that I have raised in the previous discussions leading to this one. I will get to Thomke's case study.
I am familiar with the work of Flyvberg and his phronetic social science and the values of examples and cases as form of knowledge. Incidentally, some years ago, I wrote a paper 'Case Transfer vs Case Study: An evaluation of case study as a research method for design research'.
http://5-10-20.ch/~sdn/SDN08_pdf_conference%20papers/02_Chow.pdf
However, I am currently fairly dissatisfied with my own works and am in a mood of questioning my beliefs... so these are the thoughts I have in relation to the topic of case study and not sure if they are interesting for the discussion:
1. Let us assume case study results are rich in details and reading them are important for design because design deals with the 'ultimate particular'. But reading the description of the particulars is not the same as experiencing the particulars and learning from them. There is a gap that perhaps literature and arts can fill ... and perhaps that's why James March suggests turning to poetry and plays (thanks Jude for introducing me to March). But most case study research is not literature that moves me.
2. As you all know, the advantage of abstraction in the form of theory, model, principle or concept is they are convenient and portable. It is wise not to aim for predictive algorithm for social-technical phenomena, but surely some middle range abstraction is desirable!? If I don't abstract (seek patterns among) existing case studies on Apple, I will not be able to identify knowledge gap to fill. I will just add to the cacophony.
3. Besides my observation that many claims and research on successful cases seem to be one-sided; I, as Harold, also notice that they are very positive. Knowing all the dishonesty and corruptions that have happened in our world; why do many researchers seem so rose-colored? The New York Times articles that I had referred earlier apparently prompted Apple to audit his suppliers. The journalists, in this case, seem to have done a much more socially beneficial job by revealing different kinds of truth.
Sorry for babbling.
Rosan
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