To provide evidence-based strategies for ensuring rigor of case studies, the authors examine what rigor types authors report and how they report them by content analyzing all case studies published 1995—2000 in 10 management journals. Comparing practices in articles addressing rigor extensively and less extensively, the authors reveal three strategies for insuring rigor. First, very few case study authors explicitly label the rigor criteria in terms of the concepts commonly used in the positivist tradition (construct, internal, and external validity, as well as reliability). Despite this, papers addressing rigor extensively do report concrete research actions taken to ensure methodological rigor. Second, papers addressing rigor extensively prioritized rigor types: more, and more detailed, strategies were reported for ensuring internal and construct validity than for external validity. Third, emergent strategies used in the field were reported, such as setbacks and serendipities, that necessitated changes ...

The ‘‘What’’ and ‘‘How’’ of Case Study Rigor: Three Strategies Based on Published Work:

This article examines ways of constructing research questions from existing literature, which are likely to promote the development of interesting and influential theories. We review 52 articles in organization studies and develop a typology of how researchers construct their research questions from existing literature. The most common way across paradigmatic camps is to spot various 'gaps' in the literature and, based on that, to formulate specific research questions. The dominance of gap-spotting is surprising, given it is increasingly recognized that theory is made interesting and influential when it challenges assumptions that underlie existing literature. The article discusses why assumption-challenging approaches are rare, and it identifies a range of social norms that favour gap-spotting. Finally, the article proposes some ways of constructing research questions that move beyond gap-spotting, and discusses how these ways are likely to promote more interesting and significant theories.

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Ways of constructing research questions: gap-spotting or problematization?

This paper addresses some strategies for conducting elite interviews. It draws upon material from a significant number of interviews that the author has conducted with this group in a variety of economic sectors and countries, as well as from the social sciences literature on elites. The aim of the paper is to provide insights into the particularities of interviewing elites for those new to researching this group. In particular, it focuses on gaining trust and gauging the tone of the interview, how to present oneself during the interview, asking open and closed questions, the appropriate length of an interview, whether to record the conversation, coping with difficult scenarios, asking awkward questions, managing respondents who do not answer the question, keeping respondents interested in the interview and finally gaining feedback from respondents.

Strategies for Conducting Elite Interviews

The purpose of this article is to contribute a conceptualization of liminality, a state of in-between-ness and ambiguity, as it applies to identity reconstruction of people in organizations. Liminality is discussed in anthropological and organizational literatures and a composite understanding is developed here. This incorporates a dialogical perspective and defines liminal practices along with varying orientations of dialogue between the self and others. Application of this conceptualization is illustrated by analysis of two cases and a broader application of the concept to the identity work literature is discussed.

Liminality and the practices of identity reconstruction

As the use and availability of qualitative software analysis tools increase, so does ambiguity regarding the choice of the most appropriate software in sport management research. This paper uses NVivo and Leximancer to analyse the same set of data derived from interviews with sport management experts on high performance sport to showcase the differences in findings depending on the type of software used. The findings alert sport management and social science researchers to the importance of closely examining the choice of software for qualitative data analysis. Researchers may base their decision on aspects such as the type and size of data set, their competence and skills in data interpretation and the level of engagement with data analysis they plan on undertaking. This paper discusses the implications for researchers in the sport management field using these tools for data analysis and highlights the value that software can add to the research effort.

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Choosing a qualitative data analysis tool: a comparison of NVivo and Leximancer

Interpreting qualitative data

Nursing and midwifery students' perceptions of spirituality, spiritual care, and spiritual care competency: A prospective, longitudinal, correlational European study

Teaching spirituality to student midwives: a creative approach.

Aim
This article aims to explore spiritual care in the neonatal care environment in addition to highlighting the importance of spiritual leadership of a health team in that context.

Background
Neonatal care is an ethically demanding and stressful area of practice. Babies and families require spiritual needs to be recognized in the context of holistic care. Literature around spiritual leadership is explored to nurture workplace spirituality.

Evaluation
Analysis of a range of sources provides a theoretical reflection on spiritual leadership and spiritual care in neonatal care settings.

Key issues
The literature identifies that the carers should consider carefully on how care given may affect the infant and family. Themes relating to the baby's and family's spiritual needs and those of the staff in this area are identified. Spiritual leadership by the manager will provide support to the staff and help spiritual need to be met in this area of practice.

Conclusion
Spiritual needs should be acknowledged within neonatal care whether these are of babies, families or the team itself.

Implications for nursing management
Managers have responsibility to ensure that spiritual care is carried out for babies and their families and to care for the team as spiritual leaders.

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Jenny Hall

Papers

Interpreting qualitative data

Nursing and midwifery students' perceptions of spirituality, spiritual care, and spiritual care competency: A prospective, longitudinal, correlational European study

Teaching spirituality to student midwives: a creative approach.

Spiritual leadership and spiritual care in neonatology

The Spiritual Journey of Infertile Couples: Discussing the Opportunity for Spiritual Care