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Professor Des Doran. DEVELOPING YOUR CASE STUDIES. Scope of this workshop. WP2 - Develop and utilise Case studies in Teaching. What constitutes a successful case study?. Interesting and contemporary Aligned to the module and its learning aims and outcomes
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Professor Des Doran DEVELOPING YOUR CASE STUDIES
Scope of this workshop • WP2 - Develop and utilise Case studies in Teaching
What constitutes a successful case study? • Interesting and contemporary • Aligned to the module and its learning aims and outcomes • Relevant – the student sees the relevance and learns from the content of the case • Well structured
What is a case? • “A case is a description of an actual situation, commonly involving a decision, a challenge, an opportunity, a problem or an issue faced by a person (or persons) in an organization.” (Mauffette-Leenders et al., 2007: p. 2)
Essential features of a case • An empirical portrayal of a phenomenon in a real-life context • Illuminates a decision or set of decisions faced by real managers • A focus on historical phenomena (a story) • Multiple sources of evidence • Allows you to “step into the shoes” of the decision maker, to become involved with the situation and even “feel the pressure” (Mauffette-Leenders et al., 2007) • Allows students to become a decision maker (using the learning from the class exercises)
What makes a good case? • Individual – e.g., business owners or leaders • Change processes – for example, the introduction of new technology, a new service, altered processes, cultural change.. • Decision processes – many organisations face change and your case may explore a change which requires students to make decisions based on the case data • Relevance to the student learning outcomes
Case Study Questions • Case studies work well where it is important to understand how the organizational & environmental context influences/impacts on strategic decisions and performance outcomes. • New or emerging processes or behaviour • Where focus is on ‘the unusual’ as opposed to ‘the typical’ • Capturing emergent & changing properties • Exploring informal, sensitive or secretive activities • Everyday practices to inform an organisational outcome or performance • Comparisons of different actors or stakeholders • Causes for failure as well as success • Lends itself to the study of complex ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions and what to do
Analysing the cases • Please read each of the cases and assess in terms of the following: • 1 – How clear is the case story? • 2 – Does the case clearly demonstrate the relevance to the module? • 3 – If you were a student would you be excited by the case? • 4 – how would you improve the case?