Case research has consistently been one of the most powerful research methods
in operations management, particularly in the development of new theory. This
is particularly true in today’s environment. To cope with the growing frequency
and magnitude of changes in technology and managerial methods, operations
managementresearchers have been calling for greater employment of field-based
research methods (Lewis, 1998). Pure case research, that is research based on
analysis of a limited number of cases to which, at best, only limited statistical
analysis can be applied, is widely used in Europe but is less common in North
American operations management (Drejer et al., 1998). Pannirselvan et al. (1999)
reported case study and field study research accounted for 4.94 per cent and 3.80
per cent respectively of published papers. However, there are an increasing
number of case research based papers appearing