Making Sense of a Story: Illustrations from a Case Study of Enterprise Risk Management

Abstract

Abstract The concern of this paper is methodological. It reports on how methodology and methods are coupled with the theory used in a case study. This is illustrated from my study on transformation of management control from a monologic form to a heterogenic one through the implementation of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) in an Egyptian firm. Having stimulated by the critiques developed against positivistic research in management, this paper explains what philosophical rationales justified this methodological choice and how a particular theoretical framework advanced an argument about how the above transformation occurs. The paper concludes that case study research can only be acceptable if the story is suitably theorised to make contribution to knowledge.