The Role of Case Studies in Informing Systems: Introduction to the Special Series

Abstract

Introduction This Special Series is dedicated to a particular type of case study that Grandon Gill, Professor of Business Administration now teaching at the University of Southern Florida, has defended and championed in academic circles over the past three decades: the discussion case. A central motivation for the special series on The Role of Studies in Informing Systems was to help us better understand the versatility of the discussion case. Of particular interest has been the ability of the discussion case to enable informing flows within and between the worlds of students, researchers, and practice. Method Management It is appropriate, then, that the first article in this Special Series, Case Method Management, addresses the role of the discussion case in the education of managers. In this article Harry Strachan, business school professor turned practitioner, argues from experience that the most effective senior managers practice case method teaching in leading and developing their management team. He describes the role of the case method teacher as focusing early on the decision, forcing involvement, challenging assertions, setting the rules of engagement, allowing pauses for reflection, articulating consensus, demanding analytic rigor, but also inspiring, making students and subordinates feel that sees gold in me that even I can't see. Strachan cautions us that not all teachers who use cases are using the case method. A founding partner in Bain & Co. and former INCAE and Harvard Business School professor, he prefers whiteboards to power point presentations, which he believes can subvert the learning goals of the case method by providing students with answers rather than building their analytic muscles in preparation for the heavy lifting they must perform in their jobs after graduation. Teaching Cases and Research The practice of case method management, essential for the formation of future business leaders, requires a case for discussion. This may be a as Strachan describes in consulting situations where the problems and action alternatives are sketched out on whiteboards. The first classes at the Harvard Business School were live cases, presented by Boston businessmen for discussion by students. As the School developed, however, the cases were documented. No one has contributed more to that process than Ray Goldberg, author or supervisor of over a thousand discussion cases. In an interview with Grandon Gill, reproduced in the second article in this Special Series, Goldberg relates how these cases became a critical part only not only of the teaching objectives but of the research objectives of the agribusiness faculty at HBS. The agribusiness cases developed by Goldberg, often in collaboration with colleagues from other parts of the world, relate to specific commodity systems and specific institutions. By insisting that these cases be both authentic and detailed, he made little distinction between teaching and research. On the contrary, he observed that the discussion of a case may be used as a means of bringing diverse research disciplines to a common understanding of a problem, building trust among members of the agribusiness value chain, and enabling private-public partnerships in research in the food system. Case: ECOM Coffee This is precisely what occurred in the ECOM coffee case, described by Bernard Kilian and Roy Zuniga, in which an innovation (hybrid plants) developed by a Spanish multinational in cooperation with a French public research organization is not adopted by most small Nicaraguan coffee farmers. The problem is studied by a group of MBA students and discussed as a case among the students, the various protagonists, and the faculty supervisors, leading to a common understanding. The reason for the low adoption rates was not that the small coffee growers are irrational but that the new technology, under the terms proposed by ECOM, increased their risk of loss. …