Qualitative case study research: a research project on employee participation in the Malaysian private sector

Employee participation is one of the important fields in industrial relations. Research on employee participation in Malaysia is usually conducted through large-scale surveys and quasi-experiments and only focuses on the public sector. Therefore, this research instead uses a qualitative case study approach in investigating employee participation practices in private sector companies in Malaysia. This paper discusses aspects of the methodology of case study research and qualitative data collection and the theory and arguments affecting the choice of research and data gathering strategy in this research. Concludes that carrying out qualitative case study research, in the author's experience, is first and foremost a matter of learning by doing.