Case studies in magazine and journal articles

The definition of a case study varies widely between periodicals. Magazines and trade publications often carry short articles outlining how an organization or individual handled a business or management problem. Journal articles often provide more in-depth studies of an organizational issue by using the case method as a research tool. 

Try a keyword search in an article database such as Business Source Complete or ABI/Inform Collection may retrieve case studies from trade or business magazines or journals.  In the boxes below are some sample searches.

If your search does not find relevant articles when the search includes the phrase case studies, leave it out.  

• Try searching for just the topic -- e.g. “servant leadership”.
• Limit your search results to magazines (e.g. Harvard Business Review) and/or trade publications (e.g. Healthcare Executive) to find practice-oriented articles.
• Scan the article titles for those that study a single organization or individual.

Finding case study articles in the Business Source Complete database

Caveat:  Records (but not the full-text) of the Harvard Business School Cases are covered in the Business Source Complete database. These commercial cases must be purchased from the publisher, they are not available via Interlibrary Loan. 

Case studies in the ABI/Inform database