Guide to prepare a paper for personal case study

Case study “can be defined as an intensive study about a person, a group of

people or a unit, which is aimed to generalize over several units” (Gustafsson, 2017,
p. 2). A case study has also been described as an intensive, systematic investigation of
a single individual, group, organisation, community or some other unit in which the
researcher examines in-depth data relating to several variables.

Title
The title should not reflect the field of study, instead it should fix the main
problem under investigation. So, the exact wording of the title is most often made
after the work is done and main results are obtained, although one can start with the
working title.
As the title should indicate what is being investigated, it usually reflects some
relationships between chosen characteristics of the investigated object (e.g.
diversity management and firm’s productivity; company pay structure and individual
performance; team work and company performance; workforce demography and
motivation to work; management style and engagement of employees, etc.).

Introduction
Although it is an introduction, it is also written in the end (once the goal is
clear, the methodology is applied, and the results are obtained). This is because the
introduction should contain the following components:
2.1. Reasons to choose this topic - these might be personal, but it is better to
be scientific reasons, or both. In the second case it is recommended to show that some
issues are insufficiently researched; the problem is investigated, but with some
unsatisfactory or contradictory results, and so far, the reason could be also the
emergence of a new paradigm or perspective on this problem.
2.2. The relevance of the topic, which is determined by its importance and / or
usefulness for science, economy, or society, etc. The relevance is justified by pointing
to some information sources - from literature or from practice.
2.3. Main goal – it is also formulated at the end, although there could be a
working definition at the beginning. The main goal should reflect the resolution of an
identified problem, reveal something that is insufficiently disclosed, or prove
something (including the influence of some factors, elements, components, stages on
the results of interest).
The main goal can be broken down into sub-goals or tasks that underlie the
structure of the work. The first part of the work could answer one or two of these sub-
goals, the second part – answer the others, etc. in order that in the end the main goal is
achieved.
2.4. Research methodology (briefly presented in the introduction) - what
theory or concept is shared; what methods will be used to collect data (interviews,
questionnaires, etc.), how the data will be processed, what are the hypotheses, and
shortly the obtained results.
2.5. On that basis, finally, in the introduction briefly outlines the structure of
the work - what the first, second and eventually third parts contain.

1. Part one
This part contains always a literature review of the chosen topic. In practice,
the work actually starts with this part. At the beginning one could refer to the basic
books, and if these are considered insufficient, to continue with some scientific
articles. Such articles are accessible from the university computers (in this case - in
the faculty library) mostly from the electronic libraries like Science Direct, J-store,
and others, for which the University has a subscription. These articles can be found by
searching with key words (closely related to the chosen topic). The usefulness of
consulting scientific articles is twofold. First, each article contains a literature review,
which can help the student’s review. Second, many articles can suggest how to
prepare and make your personal mini survey. Even you decide to repeat some other
research by using other’s methods, etc. in different organisation or environment, it is
acceptable.

2. Part two
This part includes student personal contribution or personal
mini-survey/research. The research may use qualitative methods, e.g. gathering
information (data) through the interview with open questions, or quantitative methods,
e.g. gathering information (data) through questionnaire with close questions (usually
scaled from 1 to 5, where 1 = “completely disagree” and 5 = “completely agree”). The
number of respondents in both cases for the case study could be around 8-10-15 etc.
Rarely one could use other data (secondary data analysis), but very attentively, as
often such data are not collected for your purpose.
Processing the qualitative data requires skills to make sensible interpretation,
and to arrive to some concepts, new ideas, etc., while processing the quantitative data
requires skills to work with Excel, SPSS, or other packages for statistical analysis.
After the obtained results are presented, these should be carefully commented.
The comments may refer to the literature review, what from the obtained results is in
line with the previous results, or what is different, and why such differences, etc.
This part my end with summarised conclusions, and based on these, with some
recommendations.
Conclusions
Conclusions should contain a recapitulation of what has been done: what was
the main goal and the tasks of your paper; what has been done to achieve the goal;
and to what conclusions you came to the end.
Literature
Here one should show all the information sources used – books, articles,
papers from the internet, etc. Important is to have the same number and the same
sources in both the text and the literature. More citations in the text are shown, more
positively the paper is viewed and vice versa – less citation in the text, more
plagiarism is suspected
Ways of citing in the text: (Smith, 2015, p. 20-22; Smith, Koen, 2010, p. 341).
For the internet sources: author, title, internet address, (retrieved: date, year).
Appendixes – here usually are attached questions for interviews, or questionnaire,
organigrams of the investigated organisations, or other materials.

Volume of the paper – in this case minimum 8, maximum 15 pages, on average – 10

pages
Exemplary structure: Introduction = 1-2 pages; 1st part = 3-4 pages; 2d part – 3-4
pages; Conclusion = 1 page.