The Case Study Handbook, Revised Edition

A Student's Guide

William Ellet

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781633696150
• eBook ISBN: 9781633696167
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

Each year, thousands of new MBA and executive education students are introduced to a new learning tool: the business case. This book provides a distinctive and useful framework for analyzing, discussing, and writing about cases.

• It addresses the case method for students, a much larger market than case method teachers. At Harvard Business School alone, there are nearly 1,000 first-year MBA students per year, and few of them have any prior experience with the case method. HBS receives approximately 6,000 to 7,000 MBA applications per year, and all of the applicants who aspire to attend Harvard are potential customers for this book.
• Rather than a hodgepodge of tools and tips, this book offers a unique, integrated approach to case analysis, organized into three major case categories.
• The book provides detailed analyses of sample cases to demonstrate the use of the method in combination with the specialist methods taught in MBA classes.
• The book includes examples of effective student writing.
• The content of the book has had extensive field testing over a long period at Harvard Business School.
• A single book is a tiny investment compared to the cost of an MBA education and the career benefits the degree can yield.

Audience: Current and potential MBA students; executive education students.

Announced first printing: 20,000
Laydown goal: 3,500

CHAPTER 1

WHAT IS THE CASE METHOD? WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU?

Each year, entering business school students—and students in many other disciplines—encounter an approach to learning that is new to them: the case method. You may be one of them. For novices, the first encounter can be frustrating and unnerving. A case appears to be a straightforward narrative, but when you finish reading it, you may ask yourself questions such as:

• What point is the case trying to make?
• Is it trying to make a point at all?
• What am I supposed to do now?

Let’s say you have read a case study of a restaurant chain that ends with the CEO turning over in his mind basic questions about the business. He has some possible answers, but the case doesn’t tell you which one he thinks is best. In another case study, a young MBA has accidentally learned of office behavior that could have serious consequences for the individuals involved, including her. At the conclusion of the case, she has a literal and figurative headache, and the choice of what she should do is left up in the air.

In the classroom, case instructors facilitate discussion, asking lots of questions, writing comments on the board, and making occasional remarks. Students respond to questions, build on each other’s comments, disagree with one another, ask questions, and try out different points of view about the case situation. A case classroom is dynamic and unpredictable; discussion can lurch into a blind alley, reverse course, and then head in a more productive direction. Sometimes the discussion may seem to end in a frustrating muddle. Students have expressed conflicting views about the main issue in the case, and the professor, the expert in the room, doesn’t step in and resolve the conflict by announcing the “right” answer. Why doesn’t she do her job?

Actually, she is doing her job. In a case classroom, you’re entitled to your own opinion; you don’t have to defer to the professor or other students as long as you back your opinion with case facts (including numbers when they’re available) and fact-based inferences and calculations. The professor doesn’t lay out the correct response to the case for one very good reason. As students, you have to learn how to think. The professor can’t do it for you. You have to practice thinking, which means you’ll gain insights and understanding that are gratifying and fun and make mistakes that are frustrating.

Written examinations that use cases pose another challenge for you. In class, everyone, including the instructor, works collaboratively on a case. On exams, you are on your own. You not only have to analyze the case in response to one or more questions but also write an essay that satisfies and persuades an expert reader, all in a limited time.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU?

Until now, your education has probably consisted primarily of lectures. They are widely used all over the world. There are good reasons for their popularity. They are an efficient way for an expert to deliver content to many individuals at once. One memorable description of the method is the “sage on the stage.” In combination with textbooks, which are lectures in print, this learning model can deliver a large amount of content to many students in a short time. In addition, student learning can usually be tested efficiently with multiple choice or short-answer questions or problem sets.

The lecture model is good for transferring information. In that sense, it is efficient (although there are serious questions about how long and how well students retain the information). However, like any learning model, it has limitations when used exclusively. Most important, lectures can teach you what to think but not how to think. Lecture content (live or delivered through media such as the web and in textbooks and other similar readings) provides theory, frameworks, concepts, facts, formulas, and expert opinion about a subject. It is the “what” of thinking.

However, for knowledge you will use in the real world—in business, for example, or in engineering or medicine—the “what” isn’t sufficient. You must know how to apply the knowledge in the real world. For that, you need to practice in situations that are similar to those you will actually encounter.

Here’s a simple example of the difference between what and how. You received a degree from Soccer University. You took courses on rules, skills, and strategy and read textbooks, listened to lectures, and watched videos and demonstrations by professional soccer players. However, you never practiced what you learned on a soccer field. Do you know how to play soccer? No, you don’t.

Similarly, let’s say you’re an MBA who took multiple accounting classes taught by the lecture method and read the assigned textbook. None of your classes used cases or any other type of active learning. In your first job, you’re asked to evaluate the organization’s accounting system. In school you had lectures on different types of accounting systems, but you were never asked to analyze, on your own, a real-world accounting system and its fit with an organization. You aren’t sure what criteria you should use. You could tell your boss that you need her help but are afraid she might question the decision to hire you.

One area of education has always recognized the importance of both the “what” and the “how.” Medical schools teach their students knowledge from a wide range of fields (the what). But it would be unthinkable to teach students the theory of medicine and turn them loose on patients with no training in how to treat them. Medical schools require clinical training: the application of what students have learned to real patients under the supervision of experienced doctors (the how). This practice continues beyond graduation from medical school in internships and residencies.

Strangely, academic disciplines that teach knowledge meant to be applied in the real world often put limited or no emphasis on the translation of knowledge into action. This knowledge requires practice opportunities. The lecture method generally doesn’t give students the chance to practice. In the case method, you use the knowledge you have learned to come up with your own answers (with the guidance of an expert). The method allows for answers that are objectively wrong or dubious because they are part of learning. The case method allows you to make mistakes and learn from them.

This fundamental shift in the learning model causes many students to be confused, uncertain, and anxious. But professors using cases are doing it for your sake. They want to give you the opportunity to practice using what they’ve taught you.

Think of it this way: when you are in a job, your professor isn’t going to be there to tell you the right answer. Your boss likely isn’t going to tell you either. After all, she hired you to come up with answers.

SKILLS FOR THE CASE METHOD

MBA students have told me they feel there is a secret to the case method that some people get and some don’t. If you get it, you do well; if you don’t, you scrape by as best you can.

The case method requires a lot from you. At the same time, it isn’t a secret society in which a few fortunate individuals get it and outperform their peers. As a case method student, you need three distinct sets of skills:

1. You need to be able to read a case and give it meaning in relation to the key issues or questions that you have been asked about it.
2. You have to be able to communicate your thinking effectively in a class discussion.
3. You must be able to write a persuasive response to a question about a case.

Reading, discussing, and writing about cases all involve the application of knowledge to the situation described in a case. What does “knowledge” mean? It includes your work experience and also the knowledge you learn in courses such as the principles of accounting, the 5Cs of marketing, and the Five Forces of Michael Porter.

This book addresses the three aspects of the case method. The case method begins with reading a case, interrogating it with questions, seeking information relevant to the questions, making inferences and calculations, and forming an opinion or conclusion about the main issue. These skills are the focus of part I of this book. In the classroom, the case method is about sharing your thinking with classmates and the instructor and learning from this collaboration. The skills related to case discussion are the subject of part II. You may have to write about cases for class assignments or the final examination. Skills for writing about cases are covered in part III. In part IV, you’ll find three cases used as examples for analyzing and writing about a case. Finally, part V includes Study Guides for taking notes to prepare for case discussion and to outline a case-based essay.

PART I

ANALYZING CASES

CHAPTER 2

WHAT IS A CASE?

Have you ever read a case? If you haven’t, this chapter will be much more useful to you after you have read a case. There are three at the end of this book to choose from. Read the first section of the case slowly and skim the rest to get a sense of the story it tells.

Much of what you read daily is packaged to make it easy to understand. The writing in newspapers, magazines, television, internet resources such as Facebook, and academic articles tells you what it means. If it doesn’t, it has failed in its purpose to inform. A newspaper article, for example, states its subject clearly, often in the first paragraph, and carefully declares its main points, which are usually explained and amplified through specific examples.

Here are the first two paragraphs from a column written by Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post:

In the recent history of management ideas, few have had a more profound—or pernicious—effect than the one that says corporations should be run in a manner that “maximizes shareholder value.”

Indeed, you could argue that much of what Americans perceive to be wrong with the economy these days—the slow growth and rising inequality; the recurring scandals; the wild swings from boom to bust; the inadequate investment in R&D, worker training and public goods—has its roots in this ideology.¹

After you read these two paragraphs, you know what the subject of the article is. You also have an expectation about the content of the rest of the article: it will explore the specific ways in which maximizing shareholder value has led to serious economic problems.

You have probably read parts or all of hundreds of textbooks. Along with lectures, they are the backbone of university education. Both are invaluable for learning about ideas that have proven useful to understanding the real world. For example, in strategy courses all over the world, students learn about Michael Porter’s Five Forces. His framework helps organize thinking about the economic factors that determine how competitive industries are. They help you see the elements underlying strategy and how organizations orchestrate them—or don’t. Theories and frameworks help you make sense of specific types of situations in the real world. Without them, you would be far less able to explain or anticipate events such as the astonishing success of an organization (e.g., Uber) or a shocking reversal of fortune (Uber). The knowledge codified in concepts and theories taught in academic disciplines is indispensable for understanding the world.

At the same time, educational texts represent reality as logical and coherent. They can make a complex situation that surprised everyone, including experts, and affected millions of people around the world appear to be the logical outcome of well-defined causes. The financial crisis of 2007–2008 that started in the United States and spread around the world is an example. Few people saw it coming, and experts, industry participants, government regulators, politicians, journalists, and victims were shocked when it happened. But afterward, experts found a pattern of actions that they believe led inexorably to the disaster.

We can learn much from the study of past events. In real time, however, real-world situations have islands of useful data, observations, and reference points but, to participants, are often fluid and chaotic, have a large degree of uncertainty, and are difficult to understand. Real-world situations don’t come with carefully selected and sorted information that tells participants what is going on and what they should do about it.

To practice using knowledge in actual situations, you need some way of immersing yourself in both the available facts and the fluidity and uncertainty that characterize the real world. That’s what cases are for.

WHAT A CASE IS, WHAT IT DOES, WHAT IT DOESN’T DO

A business case imitates or simulates a real situation. By case, I mean the substantial studies from universities or corporations, not the slender vignettes sometimes included in textbooks. Cases can also be collections of articles, multimedia content, or a variety of other types of content. They are verbal representations of reality—sometimes with visual and auditory complements—that put you in the role of a participant in a situation. The subject of cases varies enormously, from a single individual or organization to an entire nation. Printed cases can range from one page to fifty or more and can have a small or large amount of content. But all of these differe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. What Is the Case Method? What’s in It for You?
• PART I: ANALYZING CASES
• PART II: DISCUSSING CASES
• PART III: WRITING ABOUT CASES
• PART IV: CASES FOR ANALYSIS AND WRITING
• PART V: STUDY GUIDES FOR CASE ANALYSIS AND WRITING
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• About the Author