Teaching with business cases in higher education: Expectations and practical implementation by lecturers of management

Abstract

Although business cases are frequently used in management education, we have limited empirical evidence on why lecturers use them and how they develop or select them for classroom use. This article addressed this desideratum by surveying 214 lecturers to answer our three research questions: (1) How and why do lecturers use case studies in management teaching? (2) What competencies do lecturers believe they need to develop case studies themselves or to select external ones? and (3) What university pedagogical support and resources do lecturers need when using case studies? Findings: First, case studies are widely used, second, lecturers need less time to prepare and use case studies than the literature suggests and third, while the literature reports that lecturers use case studies to develop students’ social skills, we found that they generally use them to impart content knowledge. Our respondents generally feel that they possessed the necessary competencies to use case studies. Finally, few respondents feel they need pedagogical support for case-study teaching. Our findings provide quantitative evidence showing that the literature on case-study use contrasts with how lecturers actually use case studies, and they have significant implications for case study writers and lecturers who teach using case studies.