Longitudinal field studies

This chapter deals with longitudinal field studies, in-depth studies of change processes inside organizations. Cross-sectional research implies studying a phenomenon at a specific point in time. Within the domain of longitudinal studies, what further characterizes the longitudinal field study is timing. Within operations management, several types of changes can be considered suitable for using longitudinal field studies, for instance the process of adopting lean production. The contribution of longitudinal field studies is therefore likely to be theory or frameworks of change processes. The framework is more like a telescope, pointed towards the organization to direct the researcher's attention towards some particular aspects. Graphical techniques are simply visual models that help the researcher visualize data, patterns and sequences. The definition of the codes used for the coding process needs to be kept separate in a database. This means that the coding process employed in the longitudinal field study has implications for validity.