Ganesh N Prabhu (Professor, Strategy)
Note on the Case Method of Learning in Management
Adapted by Ganesh N Prabhu, IIM Bangalore (2020) from original classroom notes written by Prof. Madhav V. Rao and issued in 1987 to the Program in Rural Management students at the Institute of Rural Management Anand.
What is the nature of managerial activity? Managerial activity is the continuing process of organizing people and organizing physical resources including their embedded technical and commercial knowledge elements, under constrained conditions towards the achievement of a stated mission in line with an overall vision and a value system.
What is managerial decision making? Managerial decisions can relate to both repetitive situations and unique situations. Such decisions have enormous variety and most decisions in management are dependent on the specific decision context. Therefore, an exhaustive list of all good solutions for every possible managerial situation can never be developed. Management decisions also involve the projection of its consequences into a highly uncertain future. Management decisions are also often taken with imperfect knowledge of the underlying phenomena and sometimes taken using untested cause-effect relationships. Managerial experience is valued as it improves decision making.
What data is required for taking managerial decisions? Complete data required for taking good managerial decisions is rarely if ever available. Managers must make best use of the data at hand and consider its vintage. Data used can range from subjective to objective and may be quantifiable or may be judgmental. Probabilistic judgments and intuitions are often used to make real life management decisions in the absence of complete and required data.
What is meant by good managerial decision making? Good managerial decisions should give good results, but even good decisions may sometimes have bad consequences due to unanticipated issues. Taking good decisions requires the ability to accumulate, classify, analyze, and build upon a variety of earlier managerial situations observed and the managerial responses that were then evoked. Decisions for known managerial situations are typically based on the accumulated knowledge of managers from their own experience, their observation of the impact of the decisions by others and the accumulated management research imbibed by them through management courses. Managers also need to create new and effective responses to new managerial situations never experienced before. A relevant and varied managerial experience can over time build the intuition of practicing managers and enable them to improve their judgmental ability to use available data and take better and more holistic decisions. Therefore, relevant and varied managerial experience is valued in allotting top management roles. Managers targeting top management positions in their careers usually seek more role changes, location changes and job rotations to gain such experience.
Why is case analysis used as pedagogy in management? Case analysis is a major pedagogy in management schools as analyzing management cases can over time help students develop the strong analytical and judgmental skills that are required for taking a variety of good managerial decisions during their career. Management cases also expose students to a variety of organizations and managerial situations and help them learn to ask relevant good questions and seek suitable answers before taking decisions. Management cases are usually drawn from real life and depict some significant decision-making situation for a firm or an individual at the end of the case. The case also provides or provokes multiple alternatives from which students must identify and recommend the best alternative that can be implemented. Students are prompted to build appropriate backup plans if their recommended plan of action fails.
What are teaching cases? Teaching cases are typically written such that the information (maybe partial or complete), the decision making issues and the objectives (may be one or many) are made available but the final decision(s) taken by the decision maker at the end of case and the reasons for taking them are suppressed. In most teaching cases used in business schools, the critical issues are not explicitly identified, the information is ambiguous and contradictory, and some information may be redundant or irrelevant. Typically, there is no unique solution to a
teaching case discussed in a business school session (cases with a unique solution are often problems disguised as cases). However, some case solutions are better than others and such solutions are identified during class discussion.
Preparing for Case Analysis Sessions in Management
A preamble to the case analysis session in the PGP orientation program by Ganesh N Prabhu, IIM Bangalore (2020)
How should students prepare effectively for a case session? Read the case once rapidly to get an idea of its main issues and the types of information given. Next re-read the case carefully and seek to understand the major issues faced by the decision maker. Then decide on the major issues to be resolved and create balanced and practical answers or solutions to them. Develop these answers into clear and implementable recommendations. Carefully consider the possible implementation issues (can it be implemented easily?). Also consider backup plans. Show clearly why you do not recommend some alternates if they are being considered by the decision maker in the case.
How do students learn through the case method? There are three stages through which students learn through a case study process before and during class. These three stages are described and depicted in the diagram1 below:
Stage 1: Self-study and individual analysis of the case helps students get a good understanding of the new business situation and solutions attempted by the decision maker. Some solutions may emerge, and students may find one or two of these solutions initially more promising at this stage.
Stage 2: A small group discussion with fellow students before the class is effective in developing new perspectives from others in the group. It will help if the small group has some students with some managerial experience. Also, groups with students from more varied fields like arts, commerce and science helps develop more varied perspectives.
Stage 3: The in-class discussion of the case enables learning from presenting the case analysis and getting challenged on solutions by other students in class as well as the faculty who leads the case discussion. The more the challenges faced on their prior thinking, the more the students’ improvement of their ability to develop better case solutions.
Apart from these three stages, students are expected to carefully reflect on their new learning from each new case that they analyze to correct any faulty or inadequate thinking process used during their case preparation and during class discussion. This is important as every case helps in developing and honing the student’s individual ability to draw lessons from cases covered and to deal effectively with new business cases and their new business situations.
Overall, the case method provides a simulation for testing and refining the student’s managerial decision-making skills and their judgmental skills in a rigorous yet low personal risk situation. What students lose due to bad decisions taken in a case analysis are just marks (if it is an exam case) and not their career growth! The case method efficiently fast tracks the student’s learning process on managerial issues before they enter actual managerial decision-making situations on the job where such managerial decisions often have long lasting positive or negative career impacts.
While the analytical techniques are easily learnt, developing the skill of effective case analysis followed by its synthesis into good managerial decisions takes more time and requires continuous practice. Good case analysis ability and presentation skills are important managerial skills that have lifelong positive payoffs in any managerial role. Developing this skill as much as possible during the management program has a high lifetime career value.
----------------------------------------------------------------1Source: https://uwaterloo.ca/engineering-cases/instructors/teaching-cases. Descriptions of each stage are an adapted version.