Is Case Method Appropriate for Management Teaching

The title is a very old one, nothing new - but reexamining with new evidence is worth considering again.

Wallace Donham who introduced the case method in HBS in 1920 realized after some time that ," it was too indifferent to larger societal ills, too insensitive to the labor market, and thus to economic prosperity and equality among workers". In other words, the creator realized the limits of his creation. But today's management educators, particularly in India, understand Donhamism more than Donham. Of course, it is not an exception the same thing applies to Marxism- some Marxist know Marxism better than Marx.

During two years, a Harvard MBA student study, analyze and discuss about 500 cases. And revenue from selling a case study is a major source of earning for HBS. Credit goes to HBS to create a class in which business school across the world desire to belong. There are some schools where you have to use HBR cases whether as a faculty you like it or not.

Advocates of the case method are of the opinion that it trains students better to acquire- KASH ( Knowledge, Aptitude, Skill and Habit), where the teacher acts as a facilitator, a role, which is most debatable. I have seen it varies from silent observer to an active discussant. Though Scott Moore's study on the effectivity of case method suggests that students learn equally well thorough case method and through conventional lecturing. Bridgman’s paper suggests that business professors could use cases to look at how managers think, rather than to teach students how to think like a manager.

Steven Shugin, professor in marketing at the University of Florida’s College of Business Administration, argues for introducing rigorously testing of management theories through the scietific method, which is not achieved either through case method or lecturing. He also says, “I’m not saying the case has no value but it is not generalizable. So many cases highlighted the best companies of the 1980s like Kodak, which had gone out of business by the 1990s. A series of Harvard cases of “innovative” Enron financial transactions have since been superseded by ones on the ethics raised by its collapse", taken from the article: Why Harvard’s case studies are under fire from FT. His most serious critical comment - case teaching is popular because it is entertaining but it diverts "research from studying and developing more robust theories that should be more widely taught.", which I believe most of the faculty will not hesitate to agree.

Even if we agree,as some Harvard professor has claimed, “strive to produce cases that recreate the latest developments in all aspects of leadership and management, leveraging what has happened in the past to help students understand the challenges they may encounter in the future.” it is worth considering the assumptions behind effective learning from case studies,which is given in Figure 1 through a cause and effect diagram.

Cases require students to prepare in advance, studying the range of information provided, Faculty are trained to teach through the case method, Class is equipped with facilities like, multiple boards to note down views of different groups on different discussion points, facilities to capture the participation of each student show that individual assessment is possible instead of group evaluation, where each student from a group gets same score irrespective of their individual contribution. In addition to this the faculty must select a case which is relevant and will pass through the construct and content validity with respect to the session objective in which the case will be discussed.

What is the situation at the ground level? Our students have various events, participate in outside competitions, busy in several assignments simultaneously and you find hardly they have gone through the case before the class forget about pre-learning the basic concept. As a result we see a commonsense based discussions with a highly satisfied students and a happy faculty who is sure of getting a good students' satisfaction score.