Chapter Proposal: 'Case Study and the Doing of Casing as Entrepreneurial Topic' Daniel Hartley onions@liverpool.ac.

uk

The case study 'subject' of management and organisational studies is often assumed to need 'managing'. Observed from positions of panoptic withdrawal (back in the office, the management school, home, etc.), strategic boundaries ('cases') are drawn, field politics pose 'problems' like 'membership' and 'advocacy' (Holstein & Gubrium 1995; David 2002; Becker 1967), and dilemmas emerge of how to remain analytically 'outside' empirical spaces. These problems of defining territories and boundaries (Certeau 1984) are assumed inefficiencies needing to be somehow dissolved. Ethnographic study, the inverse 'logic' seems to suggest, might become entrepreneurial through resisting distinct boundaries and territories and creating rather than discovering understanding. Other theorists have tactically recomposed these timeless boundaries suggesting case-life is messy (Law 2004) and made up of mixed-sites (Marcus 1998), rather than neat researcher and 'case subject' dynamics, and suggest boundaries and territories imposed by case study analysts imitate conditions the human made 'subject' faces, yet, somehow, transcends. Ethnographic case study, here, would become entrepreneurial through animating messy caselife transcending and re-relating to boundaries and territories in ordinary life as well as during the doing of case study. Entrepreneurial 'shared imaginations' (Marcus 1998) would leave boundaries and territories ambiguous and unmanaged and open to be created and reimagined during study. The chapter extends these ideas into organizational and management studies literature by drawing on a longitudinal study of the emergence and nature of musical opportunity in the Mersey basin of North-West England. Perhaps typically (Flyvbjerg 2011), the 'case study' engaged with similar 'problems' posed in management literature of how to distinguish boundaries and territories to entrepreneurial opportunities and firms (Penrose 1959/1995; Shackle 1979). The chapter draws on these experiences of doing case study because issues of defining boundaries and territories of musical opportunity became the study topic (Silverman 2005) rather than a problem. The researcher is described becoming 'member' within a loose organizational movement called a.P .A.t.T. (absorbed 'inside' a.P .A.t.T. as human resource), crossing into other territories of music-making, and the heritage of opportunity experience is revealed extending back to a long history of musical making. Neither the boundaries to musical opportunity nor the casing to case-life are distinguished as distinct 'subjects'. By remaining indistinct and tactical they resist the strategic gaze of the managed spaces of musical business and scholarly study. Keeping the boundaries to case-life indistinct mean the way in which musical opportunity

influences through opening up spaces in others' stories has effect and affect on organisational writing. By engaging with and being engaged by musical opportunity the chapter animates the entrepreneurial and tactical (Certeau 1984) edginess to case-life and has critical potential (Flyvbjerg 2011) to disrupt boundaries and territories imposed by the strategic gaze of management scholars. The chapter then imagines entrepreneurial images for case study in organizational and management settings more generally. Rather than mitigating problems and posing cases with distinct boundaries, it suggests a mixed-site (Marcus 1998; Flyvbjerg 2011) case study approach tactically re-imagines these 'problems' as entrepreneurial ways to study organizational and management experience. Becker, H. (1967). Whose Side Are We On?, Social Problems, Vol. 14. No. 3. (pp.239-247). Certeau, Michael de. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life, (Rendall, S. Trans.), University of California Press, Berkeley David, M. (2002). Problems of Participation: The Limits of Action Research, International

Journal of Social Research Methodology, Vol. 5. No. 1. (pp. 1-17).

Flyvbjerg, B. (2011). Case Study in Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (eds.), The Sage Handbook

of Qualitative Research, 4th Edition, Sage Publications, California, (pp. 301-316).

Holstein, J.A. & Gubrium, J.F. (1995). The Active Interview, Sage Qualitative Research Methods Series, Sage Publications, California. Law, J. (2004). After Method: Mess in Social Science Research, Routledge Publications, London. Marcus, G.E. (1998). Ethnography through Thick and Thin, Princeton University Press, Princeton. Penrose, E.T. (1959/1995). The Theory of the Growth of The Firm, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Shackle, G.L.S. (1979). Imagination and The Nature of Choice, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Silverman, D. (2005). Doing Qualitative Research: A Practical Handbook, 2nd edition, Sage Publications, London.