FormalPara Definition

The case method is the use of a case study as a basis for classroom discussion whose purpose is the discovery, in class, of generally useful concepts, or the means of using concepts to resolve specific problems.

The use of the ‘case method’ in the teaching of business skills has its origins in the development of the Harvard Business School (HBS). But the case method itself has older origins, in the training of lawyers in the Anglo-Saxon Common Law tradition. In turn, the clinical training of physicians is reflected in the adaptations of the ancient apprenticeship system to the modern medical setting. The origins of the method are important to an understanding of the uses to which case method teaching have been put in management education.

Common Law is different from its continental or Chinese cousins in that its dictates are the consequence of cumulative precedent, the resolutions of cases tried before judges and juries applying legislated law, rather than the judicial application of a centrally derived code. The cases used in the training of lawyers in the Anglo-Saxon system are the opinions written by judges to resolve controversies that have the form of an argument between a plaintiff and a defendant, such as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas. Students studying that case examine the reasoning used to change the law regarding segregation in the provision of education in the USA. The facts they consider are those summarized by the judge and the reasoning will be that of the judge dealing with the facts and arguments of the lawyers in question. The students will not discuss what happened in the courtroom, the tactics of the lawyers, the nature of the appeals process, or other forces that might have affected the specific outcome. Their subject matter is the law, not ‘lawyering’. At least since the late nineteenth century in the US, young lawyers studied law at university, but they then went on to learn the practice of law through serving an apprenticeship – as had been the case for centuries. Even today in the US, graduating from law school does not make one a lawyer. One is still required to pass a state bar exam.

In medical schools, ‘cases’ perform almost the opposite function. Medicine is taught as a science. Topics such as anatomy and infectious disease are studied in courses using books and articles that compile contemporary understanding. But the application of that knowledge in the curing of patients is taught in the hospital or clinic by observing doctors working with patients. Later on, this involves learning by doing, in effect, practising the new-found knowledge on the patient. In other words, the students learn medicine in the classroom but they learn ‘doctoring’ in the clinical setting. The chief difference between the training of doctors today and in the past lies in the science that they are applying and in the range of tools and drugs that are available to them.

At the Harvard School of Business Administration, a different approach was adopted from the outset. The first dean, Edwin F. Gay, wrote that

Unlike the older professions, with their well-established University instruction and tried methods, Business as a department of University training, has still, to a large extent, to invent its appropriate means of instruction and to form its own traditions. From the mass of accumulating business experience, a science must be quarried. Not only must the fundamental principles guiding conservative business be elucidated, but the art of applying those principles in various fields of business enterprise must be taught in a scientific spirit. What for lack of a better term, may be called the ‘laboratory method’ of instruction must be introduced, wherever possible, if the School is to fulfill efficiently the intention of its founders. (Copeland 1957: 27)

In a later statement, Gay framed the objective more sharply: ‘In the courses on Commercial Law, the case system will be used. In the other courses an analogous method, emphasizing classroom discussion in connection with lectures and frequent reports on assigned topics – what may be called the “problem method” will be introduced as far as practicable’ (Copeland 1957). This process took a considerable amount of time – the first cases, as we would recognize them today, being introduced only in the 1920s. Yet in 1911–1912, A. W. Shaw had started a course in Business Policy (today often taught as separate courses in Strategy, Strategic Management or Organization Management) which featured living cases. A local business would visit the class to describe a certain problem. Students would write a report on the problem and then their ideas would be reviewed by the business and by Shaw.

Very shortly after the systematic collection of certain industry data commenced in the Bureau of Business Research, Melvin T. Copeland was encouraged by the School’s next dean, Wallace Donham, to publish a book of case studies in his field of commercial organization – what later became known as marketing. Soon after the 1920 publication and use of the casebook, the Research Bureau was asked to begin the collection and writing up of business cases, work that continues to the present day under what is now called the Division of Research and Course Development.

The question ‘Why the push for cases?’ gets to the heart of case method teaching. An emphasis on cases was encouraged because they were seen to provide a foundation for discussion-based learning. Today it is well established that problem-based learning is the most powerful way of engaging students in acquiring knowledge and skills for subsequent use in solving problems. Psychologists have written and lectured at considerable length about this proposition. What Dean Gay and his colleagues understood from the start was that the habit of disciplined data-based problem-solving required training in the use of analysis to make a choice. They could try to do this with live cases or by posing problems to the class based on current events or materials to which they had access. But to approach the development of a body of knowledge around a topic of importance, say consumer marketing or corporate finance, meant studying problems in the field in a comparative fashion that provided the basis for generalization, turning those studies into cases that were concise enough for students to prepare so that they in turn could ‘quarry the ideas’ for themselves and, by making them their own, make them useful.

In other words, the case method is a way of helping students to learn how problems may be solved and decisions made in a social setting – the work of management. In the process, through induction from a carefully conceived sequence of cases, students find the generalizations that lie at the basis of particular fields. However, it must be stressed that these are only generalizations because the essential idea underlying case method teaching is that there is no single right answer to a good case. There are acceptable answers associated with plans of action that make sense. There are arguments that make sense and others that do not, given a set of facts. But if the question relates to commercial or managerial action – as opposed to a piece of quantitative analysis or the appropriate accounting for a transaction – then there will be alternative approaches in all situations. Indeed, finding a new alternative when none has been offered may be much the best answer, even if it is not well worked out.

To make this approach successful, cases must present a situation, describing its substance and context with sufficient completeness. This must be supplemented by adequate exhibits outlining aspects such as financial performance, markets and competition, organization and historical background. Writing a ‘good’ case is challenging for most faculty members, since a teaching case is not the same thing as a case for the classroom. A case that is collected for purposes of research tends to be as complete and detailed a description as possible. But for a case to provide the basis for discussion, it must be short and clear enough so that students are able to prepare it (which implies several readings as well as careful analysis) in the time available for that process – usually not more than 2 h. They must be able to argue their perspective based on the data so that artfully led discussion permits the discovery of new ideas and concepts.

Obviously, this will not be the approach taken by a faculty member seeking only to illustrate the use of a tool. A case may work for that purpose, but then the subject matter is a kind of applied engineering – using a tool when that tool provides the answer. There may be other ways of designing illustrations of tools. More interesting is when the case is used to explore whether the tool is a useful way of dealing with the problem. Then the students will learn both how the tool may be used, and when it may not be appropriate and why.

The case method class can be opened in many ways, but classically it begins with the problem facing the case protagonist: what should Smith do about Johnson’s proposition? The goal is set: any discussion will have merit because it will help resolve Smith’s problem. The early discussion is used to frame the alternatives available and set the agenda for what needs to be discussed. The instructor will have spent a great deal of time before class pondering how to raise questions so that key aspects of the case are considered if they are not raised by the students. But in good case discussions, debate among the students may go beyond what has been considered by the instructor.

The path of a class depends upon the teaching objective, but a skilful case method instructor will have the class inducing key ideas from the case, from comparison with other cases, and from experience with using tools and concepts provided in readings or ‘technical notes’. In a strategy course, for example, three parallel cases on participants in a single industry may provide the basis for developing important ideas about successful approaches to competition in an oligopolistic setting. In a marketing course, a case in which a manufacturer has a frustrating time getting its retail customers to present a coherent pattern of pricing to the final consumer may introduce students to a range of trade practices companies might adopt, their legality and their effectiveness.

During a class there are many opportunities for an instructor to pause to introduce ideas, or to lift the unit of analysis in discussion from an individual firm to a class of firms. The end of class provides the opportunity to highlight points made by the students in a way that drives home their findings. The instructor needs to be careful, however, for the more the summary becomes a lecture that was prepared before class, the less the members of the class perceive themselves as having taken part in a self-managed learning experience. The case method is not an indirect approach to lecturing.

In fact, the process of a case method class is the real subject of the case method. In the class, a leader facilitates a discussion among a group of well-prepared people who have studied pertinent data and concepts in order to make a decision with consensus support that flows from the intelligent analysis of a problem facing a manager. It is this use of the scientific method by a group that can focus because of the availability of well-prepared case leadership and management that the case method is all about. So, what we teach is how we teach.

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