Overview of a Case Study

Overview of Case Study

What is a Case Study?

Much of the early work on case study technique was pioneered at Harvard Business School in the 1930s but the use of cases in business administration can be traced back to much earlier initiatives at Harvard:

"The essential fact that makes the case system ……an educational method of the greatest power is that [it makes] the student ……an active rather than a passive participant"

Wallace B Donham, Dean of the Harvard Business School, 1919-1942.

A case study is a description of a situation which gives you, the student, an opportunity to consider a business problem and to develop the skills necessary to deal with the problem in an active way.

Why are case studies useful in learning?

It is useful to think of the case as bringing together many strands of business problems and the case study as a method of learning which draws you into the situation and allows you to gain a deeper understanding of the problem and the surrounding issues. The focus in case study analysis is to develop your analytical and decision-making skills by presenting you with a wide range of information and data. Your task is to identify the facts you consider to be the most relevant and to consider alternative solutions to the problem.

Why is the case study technique used in business?

Much of what we study in business is designed to prepare us for actual experiences in the world of work. The idea behind the case study technique is to present you with a business problem and encourage you to learn from the exercise and develop confidence in your solution within a supported environment.

Your role in the case study

It is not unusual when using the case study technique to feel a little uncomfortable and unsure about what is being asked of you. After all the whole idea behind using a case study is to try to simulate a real business experience. This means that within the case study you may have to deal with incomplete information and ambiguous statements. Often the case will contain information designed to cloud the issues and sometimes what appear irrelevant facts at the beginning of the analysis become more significant as more information emerges.

You may have to prepare an oral presentation of the material and to develop skills of communication and persuasion when dealing with your own team members. All these experiences are intended to mirror the real life situations you may have to face when you go out into the business world and to contribute to your learning in an active way – learning about business problems by actually dealing with them! The major learning experience for you will revolve around your ability to communicate effectively with your team