Profiling and Mapping the Contexts of the Case Study Research in Business, Management and Accounting

Background. The increasing need for highly contextualized studies in the field of management results in the growing interest of researchers in qualitative methods, and case study methodology in particular. Case study analysis seems to be one of the most suitable research approaches to explore research problems in a given context. Due to the growing popularity of using case study analysis, there is a need to explore the body of knowledge and identify research fronts within. Research aims. The aim of the paper is to profile and map the contexts of research related to case study methodology in Business, Management and Accounting. The analysis is oriented to answering the following study questions: (1) How is the research output in the field distributed among countries, institutions, source titles (journals etc.) and authors? (2) What are the core references referring to or using case study methodology? (3) What are the key topics in publications using case study methodology? (4) What are the key geographical and business area contexts, which the case study research is embedded in? Methodology. The method of research profiling is applied to categorize the research output referring to and using case study analysis. Research profiling is categorized among bibliometric descriptive studies. The focus is given to general publication profiling (including profiling for countries, institutions, source titles and authors) and some components of topic profiling (i.e. identifying key research topics and research contexts with the technique of keywords analysis). Scopus is used as a source of data for bibliometric analysis. Key findings. Among studied references two streams can be distinguished: methodology-oriented and empirical papers. The former analyzes the aspects of case study methodology in various contexts, the latter uses case study analysis as a research method to conduct inquiries in their respective topical areas. The key research topics where case study methodology is applied encompass: (1) innovation and information/ knowledge management; (2) sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR); (3) strategic management. In regard to the geographical context, case studies most * Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. E-mail: andrzejlis@econ.umk.pl