MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

3.3. CASE STUDIES
Yin (1994:13) defines the case study as ‘an empirical inquiry that
investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real life context’.
Miles and Huberman (1994:25) define it as ‘a phenomenon of some
sort occurring within a bounded context’ They suggest that the case is
the unit of analysis but that there is a ‘heart’ or ‘focus’ to the study with
a ‘boundary’ defining the edge of the case. They point out (page 27)
that it is not possible to study individual cases devoid of their contexts
in the way that a quantitative researcher often does.
Yin (1994:13) suggests that one reason for choosing a case study is
‘because you deliberately wanted to cover contextual conditions,
believing that they might be highly pertinent to your research design.’
As we have seen, this is a characteristic of a realist inquiry, as is also
noted by Tsoukas (1989) who suggests that such studies usually have
utilised, though maybe not exclusively, the case-studies form.
There are significant contextual issues in this research project. First,
because of lack of knowledge, personally and theoretically, of the
extent to which management is recognisable in trade unions, a
decision was taken to examine managerial activities in unions which
had merged. Thus, the fact of recent or relatively recent, merger was a
contextual issue which was central to the work.
Secondly, trade unions are very different organisations. The
experiences of their members, and hence of their officials, are
significantly related to the industries in which they organise. The most
easily identifiable characteristics in this connection are whether the
members are predominantly white collar or blue collar and whether
they are within the private or public sector. White collar, public sector,
organisations often have highly developed committee systems,
reflecting the experience of the members, and these might be expected
to raise issues about the boundaries between the roles and activities of
those committees and the roles and activities of managers. Blue collar
unions might be expected to have more of an oral tradition, where
boundaries might be more negotiated than formal. They might also
value election of officials as an expression of union democracy.
Thirdly, union activists demonstrate very different political traditions. It
is probably not possible to correlate politics with boundaries between
activists, working within union governance structures, and managers
but those traditions may lead to a union being relatively leadership
predominated or relatively committed to membership participation
(Fairbrother 2000) – or to partnership. This explicitly affects boundaries
between them.
All this indicates that it would not be realistic to study ‘trade union
managers’ as though they were a sui generis group of managers.
Every manager works within a context and contingencies affect every
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