Jurisch et al. Case Survey Method for Information Systems Research Proceedings of the Nineteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Chicago, Illinois, August 15-17, 2013. 1 Using the Case Survey Method for Synthesizing Case Study Evidence in Information Systems Research Completed Research Paper Marlen C. Jurisch Technische Universität München marlen.jurisch@in.tum.de Petra Wolf Technische Universität München petra.wolf@in.tum.de Helmut Krcmar Technische Universität München krcmar@in.tum.de ABSTRACT A common characteristic of the IS discipline is that the bulk of the empirical evidence is embodied in case studies. However, the ever-growing body of case based evidence also constitutes a major challenge to the IS discipline. Although each case study may provide rich insights into specific phenomena, it is difficult to generalize on the basis of single-N or small-N case studies. What IS research would benefit from is a method that allows for the quantitative inquiry of the vast amount of primarily qualitative case studies. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the case survey method as new mode of inquiry to supplement the rich repertoire of IS review methods. Therefore, we show how the case survey method is embedded in the landscape of review methods used in IS research and what its principal stages, techniques, limitations and potentials are. Keywords Case survey, meta-analysis, case study research, methodologies INTRODUCTION A common characteristic of the information systems (IS) discipline is that the bulk of the empirical evidence is embodied in case studies (Alavi & Carlson, 1992). However, the ever-growing body of case based evidence constitutes a major challenge to the IS discipline. Although each case study may provide rich insights into specific phenomena, it is difficult to generalize on the basis of single-N or small-N case studies (Darke & Shanks, 1998; Newig & Fritsch, 2009). Large-N case studies would be a better choice, but due to high complexity case studies are rarely framed as large-N studies (Larsson, 1993; Piekkari & Welch, 2011). The main crux is not that IS research is lacking knowledge but rather that this knowledge lies distributed over countless single-N and small-N case studies. IS research has progressed to the point that there is a need for identifying the ‘cement that glues’ these unique case studies (Stall-Meadows & Hyle, 2010). The case survey method presents a powerful approach for identifying and statistically testing patterns across case studies (Larsson, 1993; Lucas, 1974). Case surveys draw on the richness of numerous case studies and therefore allow for wider generalizations than single-N and small-N case studies (Larsson, 1993). The bulk of IS case studies presents a rich pool of relevant empirical findings (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007; Myers & Avison, 1997) whose “individually limited scientific contributions can be enhanced through systematic analysis of patterns across cases” (Larsson, 1993). The case survey method holds the following four potentials for IS research: (1) allows IS researchers to tap the vast experiences enclosed in IS case studies, (2) provides an approach for synthesizing qualitative data into quantitative results, (3) helps in answering some basic questions in IS research and (4) supports to establish summative validity for some of the theories developed or extended in IS case studies. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides a brief summary of the various review methods used in IS research for synthesizing data across research studies and shows how the case survey method fits into this landscape. Section 3 specifies the stages and techniques of the case survey method. In section 5, we discuss the limitations and in section 5 its potentials for IS research.