OTMT Graziadio Organization Theory & Management

Using Business Source Complete to search for Case Studies

Why Use Business Source Complete? The writing style of the case studies from many sources in Business Source Complete will often be more formal in tone.

For case studies that read more like stories, try searching for Harvard Business Review Case Studies in Business Source Complete as noted in the second method below ( or use Emerald Management Xtra to look for cases in The Case Journal).

There are two ways of locating case studies in Business Source Complete.

1. One method is to use a Document Type limiter field selecting Case Study when searching for topics of interest. 

2. The other method is to search for case studies within a publication by Publication Name, such as Harvard Business Review. While Business Source Complete does not contain Harvard Business School cases, this database does provide case studies from HBR!

Please note, if you are looking for Harvard Business School Cases, these are separately published from Harvard Business School Publishing. HBS cases are not available via the Pepperdine Library. See our FAQ on HBS cases for more details. 

Using Emerald Management Xtra to Search for Case Studies​

Why use Emerald Management Xtra? The case studies here are similar to HBR in that they read more like stories.

Note: Interlibrary Loan is available to current Pepperdine students, faculty, and staff when full-text is not available. Make an interlibrary loan request or visit the interlibrary loan page for more information.

When using Emerald Management Xtra, search for "case studies" and browse within The Case Journal, which is the official journal of The CASE Association, one of the most prominent US case study organizations. The Case Journal is described by Emerald Management Xtra as "the leading online, double-blind, peer-reviewed journal featuring factual teaching cases and case exercises." 

Using the Open Access (OA) Journal from the Society for Case Research

Why use this particular Open Access Journal? Immediate access to full-text of the articles provides peer-reviewed case studies of real-world business problems.

• Journal of Case Studies

One final option for locating case studies is to use the open access journal from the Society for Case Research called Journal of Case Studies. This is an open source journal which provides direct access to the full-text of the articles. Users may browse by issue or search by keyword. Journal of Case Studies (as described by Cabell's Directories of Publishing Opportunities) publishes "peer-reviewed case studies of real world business problems designed for faculty and students to adopt for usage in the classroom."