Report R2.16 Research in Practice: Doing Case Study Research Seminar Leader: Thillai Rajan Annamalai thillair[at]iitm.ac.in In the literature on organisational reform and restructuring, changes within an organisation are often seen as response to changes in the external environment. These changes could be continuous evolutionary changes or discontinuous revolutionary changes. The seminar leader drew on a study on power sector reforms in Orissa, undertaken as part of his doctoral work to illustrate this. The chief components of reform program were restructuring of the Orissa State Electricity Board (OSEB) by unbundling, corporatisation, privatisation, promoting competition, establishing a separate regulatory authority and tariff reform. The generation, transmission, and distribution of power were unbundled to facilitate these. Through an exploratory study that analysed the chain of events at re-structuring, the researcher identified three distinct phases in this period of transition. * In the "Impetus phase", the momentum for change originated and got strengthened. * In the "re-organisation phase" a new industry structure emerged. * In the "consolidation phase" new organisations were strengthened. Factors leading to reform were categorised as follows: * Contextual factors that were the primary drivers initiating the process of change. * Facilitating factors, the presence of which created a favourable environment for reform. * Trigger factors that referred to critical events that created a compelling necessity to implement reform. The poor performance of OSEB and certain conditions imposed by the World Bank for funding various projects were the chief contextual factors that led to reform. He identified "political interference", lack of commercial culture, poor pricing and investment practices, poor billing and collection, high distribution losses, and non-payment of subsidies as causes for the poor performance. During the discussion, the possible bias in terms like "political interference" was pointed out. It was also noted that performance could be evaluated, based on a number of criteria other than economic criteria. The facilitating factors included favourable government policies, support from the top management of OSEB, and the absence of a powerful agricultural lobby that depended on power subsidies. The chief trigger factor was the inability of the Government of Orissa to raise finances for completing the Upper Indravati hydroelectric project without depending upon the World Bank. This led to a discussion on how researchers often make intuitive categorisations during the course of their work. Such categorisations and associated vocabulary are aimed at bringing order and facilitating useful discussions in an area of study. Often this usefulness is a measure of their validity. However, following some accepted procedures for such "idea structuring" could contribute to their defensibility and facilitate their systematic contestation. Case studies of the type carried out by the seminar leader rely on analytical (rather than statistical) generalisation and depth of understanding to achieve validity and reliability. The research design sought to achieve construct validity (agreement between operational measures and theoretical concepts), internal validity (establishment of causal relationships), external validity (establishment of a domain in which the findings can be generalised) and reliability (for repeatability of findings). Case studies focus on events in their natural settings and are suitable for studies where context is of high importance. They have strong potential for revealing complexity and help to understand various phenomena as they actually occur in a particular setting. They are especially effective for exploratory studies References Yin, R. K. (1994). Case study research: Design and methods. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine. Rajan A. T., & Ram, A. V. (2000). Towards developing a processual understanding of power sector reform: The case of Orissa State Electricity Board. Utilities Policy, 9(3), 93-10. Rajan A. T., & Ram, A. V. (2003). Roles of principal players during restructuring: The case of Orissa State Electricity Board. In Vipin Gupta (Ed.), Transformative organizations: A global perspective (pp. 65-84). New Delhi, India: Sage.
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