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Case Study Analysis

Case study analyses are investigations of situations or problems in order to examine or propose the most effective solution, treatment, or approach to solving or addressing the problem.

Analyzing a case entails looking at the situation fronm various angles paying attention to even the smallest details, as it is usually details that lead you to understanding a situation to its fullest and help you make effective decisions. To analyze a case study, follow these basic guidelines:

Read carefully Identify major issues Identify alternative courses of action Recommend a course of action Provide a rationale for your decision

Read Carefully

Every case study you encounter will be different. Read slowly and carefully, taking notes or annotating the document. If appendices are included, read those carefully too, as the smallest detail can make a difference in what you determine is the best course of action. Read tables and figures carefully, and interpret them in relation to the information contained in the case study.

Identify Major Issues

Your main job when analyzing a case study is to learn to identify major issues of concern. Details are individual instances of action, but details can provide evidence for how a major issue is being affected. For instance, if someone is consistently sending out poorly written letters with misspellings and grammar errors to clients, that’s a detail; however, that detail is evidence that the company’s reputation is at stake.

Once you identify major issues, look at how they are being presented or compromised in the case study so that you have a basis for how to effectively deal with the situation and solve the problem. Typically, case studies are written in chronological order, so it may take several readings to identify major issues correctly (O’Rourke, 2007) and from various perspectives.

Identify Alternative Courses of Action

This is where you put your course knowledge to work. What have you learned about how to solve certain issues through your course material and discussions? To identify an appropriate course of

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action, or identify several ways to deal with a situation, you will apply what you have learned to your understanding of the case study and the major issues you have already identified.

Recommend a Course of Action

A recommendation is a plan for implementing a certain course of action that you deem to be the most advantageous. Choose a course of action that you identified in the earlier section and set forth the details for how to put this decision into action. Who needs to do what, when, where, and how?

Provide a Rationale for Your Decision

Provide your audience with reasons for the conclusions you have drawn, including any additional or outside research you have conducted to substantiate your decision.

## Analysis Tools

Before writing your case study analysis, review the case study using one or more of the tools listed below and designed to help identify critical issues in the case study. Your instructor may have certain requirements and ask you to use one or several of the tools below in your case analysis.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT or SWOTT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, and Technology. This tool used to analyze various aspects of a company. This framework sets you up nicely to ask questions about the company in order to determine what issues might affect a company the most. A search in the Business Source Complete database in the Purdue Global Library will provide a number of results that describe the SWOT Analysis tool.

Fishbone (Ishikawa) Diagram

Fishbone is a cause and effect tool for determining the major problems in a case study and formulate a problem statement. A quick search on the Internet will result in multiple sites that show this diagram and its use.

Flowchart Diagram

A flowchart diagram are used for visually displaying a process of any kind. Processes are oftentimes viewed differently by each individual, so such a display will help readers understand where a process is breaking down or how to improve an existing process, or even develop an entirely new process. There are various software programs that specialize in drawing flow charts, and even Microsoft Word has a simple flow diagram tool, and a quick search on the Internet will show what such a diagram looks like.

Capital Budgeting Analysis

This is a financial tool that helps you to understand the financial implications of a situation. It helps one to see the cost benefits or how the bottom line is affected. A template of a capital budgeting analysis is

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provided by clicking on this link: CapitalBudgeting Template

What Does a Case Study Analysis Look Like?

Depending on your instructor and/or class, you may be asked to write your case study analysis in several ways: as a report, a business letter, or memo.

Additional guidelines for preparing your case study:

Do not paraphrase or summarize the case study in your analysis. Use the case study to help answer key questions provided to you by your professor or on the assignment. Case studies are used as learning tools, so the purpose of writing a case study analysis is to demonstrate your learning through your analysis and recommendations. Base your analysis and recommendations on course material and other relevant outside research. Use a deductive reasoning, which means to start with an overarching statement that is supported in subsequent parts of your analysis with plenty of details. In real world situations, you cannot assume your readers are as familiar with a case as you are, so use plenty of detail and fully explain any conclusions you draw from the case. Use proper citation and other guidelines for appropriate use of sources and document formatting, categorizing information into sections or under headings, and revising and editing carefully.

References

O’Rourke, J. S. (2007). Management communication: A case-analysis approach. Pearson Prentice Hall.

Salinas, A. (n.d.). Capital budget analysis template. https://kuportal- a.akamaihd.net/ascmedia/wc/capitalbudgetingtemplate.xls

Writing a Case Study Analysis Report

A report is a generic term for a business document that provides general information about a project or company. There are various types of reports (i.e., progress, feasibility, informative) and the way reports are formatted and written vary according to the purpose and audience of the document. A case study analysis may be written as a report in which case you might consider using the following structure:

Introduction or Background – This section introduces the purpose of the report, which is to offer an analysis and recommendation for a course of action based on a certain situation (the case study). Major Issues – In this section, identify major issues that result from the case study. Also explain how these issues are part of the problem or are being compromised according to the details in the case study. Alternative Courses of Action – In this section, provide readers with various options for solving the problem. This shows you have thought through the situation from various angles. Recommendation – Recommend one course of action from the previous section. Provide a rationale for this course of action, as well as details about how this action should be implemented.

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Conclusion – Every document has to have a conclusion. In this case, you can reiterate your recommendation and how that recommendation will solve the issues mentioned in the second section of this report.

Writing a Case Study Analysis Business Letter

A business letter is generally used to build relationships; however, in some cases, business letters can serve as vehicles for sharing information. If asked to provide a case study analysis through a business letter, you will want to follow these general letter-writing guidelines.

Introduction: Every business letter should have an introductory paragraph that announces the purpose of the letter.

Body paragraphs: Once the purpose has been established in the introductory paragraph, use the body paragraphs to describe or explain relevant details according to your reader’s needs. For a case study analysis, use these paragraphs to identify major issues and recommend a course of action, as well as provide your rationale for your recommendation. Usually, you will not include your analysis tools in a business letter like you might in a report. You can still use the tools, but because a business letter is generally more succinct and concise than a report, generally, you would not show your analysis.

Conclusion: Every business letter should include a closing paragraph that may, in this case, reiterate your recommendation and/or let the reader know what you would like him or her to do as a result of the letter.

A business letter should always include the sender’s address, a date, the receiver’s address, and an opening and closing salutation as shown in the following example.

Example 1: Sample Business Letter Using Block Style Formatting

Front Range Design and Printing 1234 University Avenue, Denver, CO 80936 303-555-5555, www.frdesignandprinting.com

September 27, 2010

Dr. Roberta Perez Front Range Technical Institute 2266 Technical Institute Way Falcon, CO 80831

Dear Dr. Perez:

Thank you for choosing Front Range Design and Printing to create and print the marketing brochures for Front Range Technical Institute. Per our phone call yesterday, we are ready to begin the design process and welcome any level of involvement you choose.

Your designer is Patricia Beltran, who will contact you this week to set up an appointment to gather information on brochure size, paper, colors, logo permissions, and standardized design of all pieces. She also will ask for contact information for each department that will need a brochure. Patricia works directly with the writer for your project, Alex Trujillo, who will be working with the contact person in each department to gather information for the text of the brochures.

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Once a preliminary design has been created and a draft of the text is written, we will provide you with mock-ups for approval. There are approximately four stages of approval in the design process and two approvals needed when the brochures go to print. We will notify you one week in advance of each approval needed. Patricia also will provide you with a timeline for completion after your initial meeting with her.

We look forward to serving Front Range Technical Institute, and like all of our customers, we will provide you with our best professional and personalized service at all times. If at any time you have questions or concerns, please contact me at 303-555-5555 or at [email protected]

Sincerely,

Ann Brand

Ann Brand, President

From Technical writing (p. xx), by Martinez, D. Peterson, T., Wells, C., Hannigan, C., & Stevenson, C., 2008, Kaplan Publishing, Inc. Copyright 2020 by Kaplan Publishing, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

Writing a Case Study Analysis Memo

A memo is an internal form of communication, meaning memos are not usually sent to clients or customers. They generally stay in-house and are used to communicate company information. Sometimes, you may be asked to report your findings of a case analysis through a memo. The format for a memo is as follows:

Date: Current date To: State the person’s name and title on this line (Diane Hendrix, CEO) From: State the sender’s name and title on this line (Joe Morgan, Customer Service Representative) Subject: Be brief, but descriptive in your subject line

Sometimes the Date, To, From, and Subject lines are single spaced and sometimes they are double- spaced depending on your company’s preference. The body of a memo is single spaced and follows the Subject line (double-space after the Subject line). Double space between the paragraphs. The body of the memo can be set up similar to the format for a case study analysis report (see outline for a report above). You may also use subheadings in a memo for easier reading. While a memo is also a shorter type of correspondence than a report, for instance, you may or may not want to include information from your analysis tools, depending on whether or not you think the reader needs to see that information (or your professor asks for it). Usually, that kind of information might be extraneous for a memo, but you should always check with your reader first to verify if it is needed or wanted.

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The Adoption of Cloud Computing in the Field of Genomics Research: The Influence of Ethical and Legal Issues Kathleen Charlebois*, Nicole Palmour, Bartha Maria Knoppers

Centre of Genomics and Policy, Faculty of Medicine/Department of Human Genetics, McGill University,

Montréal, Québec, Canada

* [email protected]

Abstract This study aims to understand the influence of the ethical and legal issues on cloud comput-

ing adoption in the field of genomics research. To do so, we adapted Diffusion of Innovation

(DoI) theory to enable understanding of how key stakeholders manage the various ethical

and legal issues they encounter when adopting cloud computing. Twenty semi-structured

interviews were conducted with genomics researchers, patient advocates and cloud ser-

vice providers. Thematic analysis generated five major themes: 1) Getting comfortable with

cloud computing; 2) Weighing the advantages and the risks of cloud computing; 3) Recon-

ciling cloud computing with data privacy; 4) Maintaining trust and 5) Anticipating the cloud

by creating the conditions for cloud adoption. Our analysis highlights the tendency among

genomics researchers to gradually adopt cloud technology. Efforts made by cloud service

providers to promote cloud computing adoption are confronted by researchers’ perpetual

cost and security concerns, along with a lack of familiarity with the technology. Further

underlying those fears are researchers’ legal responsibility with respect to the data that is

stored on the cloud. Alternative consent mechanisms aimed at increasing patients’ control

over the use of their data also provide a means to circumvent various institutional and juris-

dictional hurdles that restrict access by creating siloed databases. However, the risk of cre-

ating new, cloud-based silos may run counter to the goal in genomics research to increase

data sharing on a global scale.

Introduction

Cloud computing facilitates the storage and management of large amounts of data, but can also serve as a possible instrument of surveillance.How cloud computing is perceived, understood and adopted varies depending on the needs and preferences of a set of stakeholders in a partic- ular field [1]. In genomics research, cloud computing technology provides a way for researchers to enhance their capacity to store and share data, save time and reduce costs of data sharing [2, 3]. With next-generation sequencing yielding unprecedented amounts of data, the ability of cloud computing to search for common patterns and to generalize results will accelerate the development of treatments and diagnostic tools.

PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0164347 October 18, 2016 1 / 33

a11111

OPENACCESS

Citation: Charlebois K, Palmour N, Knoppers BM

(2016) The Adoption of Cloud Computing in the

Field of Genomics Research: The Influence of

Ethical and Legal Issues. PLoS ONE 11(10):

e0164347. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0164347

Editor: Dongmei Li, University of Rochester,

UNITED STATES

Received: December 3, 2015

Accepted: September 23, 2016

Published: October 18, 2016

Copyright: © 2016 Charlebois et al. This is an open

access article distributed under the terms of the

Creative Commons Attribution License, which

permits unrestricted use, distribution, and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original

author and source are credited.

Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are

within the manuscript.

Funding: The research was funded by the National

Sciences and Engineering Research Council

(NSERC) Discovery Frontiers Initiative, Genome

Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation

(CFI), and the Canadian Institutes of Health

Research (CIHR) as part of the Cancer Genome

Collaboratory (Grant #448167-13). The funders

had no role in study design, data collection and

analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the

manuscript.

Harnessing the potential of cloud computing however, may well depend on how the ethical, legal and security challenges are addressed [3–6]. As researchers, patient advocates and cloud service providers are faced with these challenges, they struggle to address them without imped- ing data sharing. One major challenge relates to the risk of a security breach in a cloud comput- ing system [3]. The risk of a data breach is further exacerbated as data are transferred by cloud service providers between data centers situated in different jurisdictions [4, 5]. As a tool in genomics research, cloud computing must also address privacy issues, especially that of possi- bly identifying an individual.

One definition of cloud computing applied to the field of genomics research is the following: “a scalable servicewhere genetic sequence information is stored and processed virtually usually via networked, large-scale data centers accessible remotely through various clients and plat- forms over the Internet”[4]. More specifically, cloud technology is divided into three major ser- vice arrangements: 1) infrastructure (AmazonWeb Services,Google), 2) platforms (ex.: Globus Genomics) and 3) software (ex.: Dropbox)[4–7]. Cloud services also comprise three deploy- ment models (public, private or hybrid) that vary depending on the extent to which they are freely accessible [4–7]. Decisions over the type of services and deployment models influence the form cloud computing adoption takes and may reflect how varying ethical, legal and social challenges are managed.

The overarching aim is to achieve a balance between data sharing and ensuring the privacy of genomic data. Recommendations to that end range from the need for researchers to gain awareness of how cloud service providers treat data [4] to the establishment of endeavors focused on clarifying such issues [3]. Regarding the latter, initiatives, such as the Cancer Genome Collaboratory as well as the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), have been established with the aim of facilitating the development of powerful computational tools that would enable research to be conducted on large data sets, while addressing the ethi- cal, social and privacy issues that are thought to inhibit cloud computing adoption and there- fore, data sharing [8, 9].

Examining how the issues surrounding the adoption of cloud computing could provide clar- ifications on how best to ensure that cloud computing is used responsibly. Thus, our research objective is to identify the various ethical, privacy and security issues facing the adoption of cloud computing in genomics research. Our study firstly examines how these issues shape cloud computing adoption and use in the field of genomics research and secondly, seeks to understand how they are managed by genomics researchers, patient advocates and cloud ser- vices providers.

Framing Cloud Computing Adoption in Genomics Research

In order to understand how ethical, social and legal issues are managed by genomics research- ers, patient advocates and cloud service providers and how this shapes cloud computing adop- tion, we drew on Diffusion of Innovation theory, and adapted it to consider the ethical, privacy and security issues arising from the adoption and use of cloud technology in genomics research. Diffusion of innovation theory [10] (DoI) posits that decisions regarding the adop- tion of a new technology revolve around five dimensions: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability [10]. Other models add the dimensions of trust and security, which pertain to ethics and privacy [11, 12].

Relative advantage

Relative advantage refers to the “degree to which using an innovation is perceived as making one better off than otherwise” [10, 13]. The extent to which an innovation is viewed as an

The Adoption of Cloud Computing in the Field of Genomics Research

PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0164347 October 18, 2016 2 / 33

Competing Interests: The authors have declared

that no competing interests exist.

improvement to already existing technologiesmay influence the adoption of a novel technol- ogy, as well as its use. According to studies that focus on cloud computing, cloud technology is attributed to facilitating data sharing among researchers as well as the storage of data generated following next-generation sequencing at a low cost. Other advantages include its scalability and in particular, its cost-effectivenesswith respect to the amount of data it can store [4, 5].

Compatibility

Compatibility refers to the degree to which an innovation is perceived to be consistent with internal organizational and information systems environments, as well as with already held val- ues and beliefs prior to adopting the technology [10, 13]. The degree of compatibility with pre- existing computer systems influences the adoption of cloud computing. Compatibility also speaks to how cloud technology is confronted by already existing norms and values. The latter are embedded in various policies and regulations surrounding data privacy, be they institu- tional or jurisdictional. Researchers’ familiarity with the ethical, privacy and security issues per- taining to cloud computing play a role in their assessment and adoption of this technology. Compatibility rests on efforts to align or adjust cloud technologywith already existing institu- tional and information technology (IT) environments as well as norms and values (as embed- ded in policies and regulations), or vice versa.

Complexity

Complexity discusses the degree to which using an innovation is perceived as a difficult task or complex, and its ease of use or necessitating additional training or support [10, 13]. Shaping perceptions over the usability of a novel technology is the perceived difficulty in learning how to use it [11]. This, in turn, shapes the manner in which cloud technology is adopted, in partic- ular, the type of deployment models potential users will wish to install.

Trialability-trust

While trialability is defined as the possibility for a potential user to try out a novel technology before adopting it[10, 13], other uses of DoI theory focus instead on issues of security and trust [11, 12]. Indeed, trust between potential users and cloud service providers is required for a potential user to be willing to try out a novel technology before adoption. Trust is defined as the extent to which a party relinquishes control to another party on the belief that it will fulfill tasks and responsibilities it values [14]. Shaping cloud computing adoption are the relation- ships between genomics researchers, cloud service providers and patient advocates. Of particu- lar interest is the relationship between cloud service providers and customers. Cloud service providers tend to be perceived as lacking transparency as to how they go about ensuring the security and privacy of the cloud, as it pertains to sensitive data that may identify a patient [3, 4, 15]. Issues of trust and transparency center on not only the nature (and power equilibrium) in contractual agreements, but also monitoring by the customer of how their cloud service pro- vider stores and secures the data.

Observability

Observability refers to the degree to which cloud computing is considered a must within a cer- tain field [10, 12]. What prompts potential users to adopt a technologymay be influenced by its reputation within their field, as well as within society. Uses of cloud computing in other fields, such as the financial sector, may be exemplars of success [16] and may compel potential users to adopt a novel technology. In the face of ongoing security and privacy concerns in the

The Adoption of Cloud Computing in the Field of Genomics Research

PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0164347 October 18, 2016 3 / 33

adoption and use of cloud computing, efforts are beingmade to augment public confidence in the field [3, 4, 6, 17].

Materials and Methods

Research Design

Our research project consists of a single case study[18]. Given our aim to study a phenomenon, cloud computing adoption, in a specific context, genomics research, a case study approach was deemedmost appropriate. The unit of analysis includes the experiences, direct and indirect, with adoption and use cloud computing as a research tool. We thus sought to trace the process through which genomics researchers (GRs), patient advocates (PAs) and cloud service provid- ers (CSPs) consider ethical, privacy and security issues when adopting cloud technology in the context of genomics research.

Sampling and recruitment

A combination of sampling strategies was used to recruit participants. A convenience sampling frame served as a starting point, after having contacted known cloud computing providers, users and patient advocacy groups with data repositories. Participants were mainly drawn from web sites of leading genomic consortia in the field of genomics research, namely the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health and the Cancer Genome Collaboratory. A purposeful sampling strategy was employed to ensure that potential participants were selected according to our research objective [19]. On that basis, criteria were used to select potential participants from each group according to our research aims (see Table 1). We focused on participants most closely associated with the innovation and integration process in cancer genomics.We

Table 1. Selection criteria for recruitment of participants.

Genomics researchers Patient advocates Cloud service providers

Inclusion criteria

Whether participant is author or co-author in

studies in cancer and/or genomics research

Involvement (past or present) in genomic

research projects using cloud computing as a tool

(this involvement may include not only actually

using cloud computing but may also include those

who have used cloud computing, are considering

cl

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