Qualitative research in the making : a practical guide to project design

Contextualist methodology is the main focus of discussion in this paper, and its attributes as a rigorous approach to case study methodology are discussed. In a departure from the usual practice of applying this methodology to processes of organisational change, its efficacy in relation to cases of managerial decision making is demonstrated. The method is illustrated through references to a case study researched by the writer, the Moura Mine disaster of 1994. Reference to the case shows how a model of decision making processes was constructed as a tool to generalise the findings about behavioral decision making to other situations. The main aim of the paper is to present a convincing argument for this new area of application that will both extend the breadth and power of contextualist methodology and provide researchers with an additional tool for case study research.