1 This document is an earlier version of a paper subsequently published according to the following citation: McQueen, R.J.

(1995), Case method teaching in strategic management: using and creating New Zealand case resources. Proceedings of the 3rd Annual New Zealand Strategic Management Educators Conference , pp. 185-191. [Publisher: New Zealand Strategic Management Society, Auckland, New Zealand]

Case Method Teaching in Strategic Management: Using and Creating New Zealand Case Resources
Robert J. McQueen Dept of Management Systems University of Waikato Hamilton, New Zealand bmcqueen@waikato.ac.nz Abstract
Many educators have had only limited experience in their own educational background on the receiving end of case method teaching , and may be justifiably cautious about its strengths and challenges. The term case study can be used to refer to a broad range of material, from a two page "story with questions" at the end of a textbook chapter, intended to be a five minute endof-lecture illustration, to a 60 page case with no questions, intended to be used in a two hour class discussion setting. We focus on the Harvard Business School case method model at the latter end of that spectrum, and discuss the characteristics of case method teaching in the New Zealand context, including motivating student pre-class preparation, pre-class small group discussion, in-class discussion participation management, and grading student participation. The characteristics of desirable case materials are discussed, and an example of how New Zealand case material have been economically developed as an outcome of graduate course projects is given. Finally, we share our experiences with using computer-based electronic group communication (groupware) to support case method teaching, and describe how this technology can be effectively used.

Origins of case method teaching

Case method teaching has its roots in the study of law, where notable court decisions have long been discussed by students in the classroom, so that students might develop their own sets of rules to apply to similar situations. The supply of potential law case examples is virtually limitless. Every court decision is in the public record, and usually contains a substantial written review of the issues of the case, together with the judges decision, and the reasons for it. The first substantial use of cases in the teaching of business subjects is generally credited to the Harvard Business School, which was founded in 1908. ...by 1924 the bulk of 1. the instruction in most of the courses in the School was on the case system The Harvard Business School is seen by most as the main proponent of case method teaching, with a heavy, almost exclusive reliance on this method to deliver their graduate MBA course materials. Over the years, HBS has build up a substantial resource of case method materials,
1 Copeland, Melvin T. And Mark an Era, The Story of the Harvard Business School , p 76 [2].

including cases, teaching notes and other supporting materials such as videotapes and industry background notes. Most other graduate and undergraduate business schools use case method teaching to some extent, although there are strong opinions held in the academic world, both pro and con, on the appropriateness of the method for quantitatively oriented subjects.

Characteristics of case method teaching

Case method teaching usually involves the discussion of a single case situation during each class session. Class sessions are typically longer than normal lecture lengths of 50 minutes or so, and periods of 80 to 120 minutes duration would be typical. A course in a subject area might consist of 10 to 20 classes, each discussing a different case, but linked together in develop a theme. Cases usually contain a description of a business situation that leads to a decision point. Students consider the information presented in the case, develop action alternatives, analyse the effect of each of the alternatives, and recommend a path to take. The case frequently paints thumbnail sketches of a few of the main characters in the situation, and encourages the reader to put themselves in their shoes when considering available options. The use of the case method in management education has some strong supporters. Corey [3] suggests that
Management education is like legal training, medical training or any field of professional education based on situational diagnosis and prescription. The reasoning is inductive; it proceeds from the particular to the general. The products of such training are analytical skills and conceptual understanding in the fields of study. By comparison, deductive learning proceeds from the teaching of a body of principles which may then be applied to relevant classes of problems. Students first learn principles, and then seek to apply them to the treatment of specific situations. In management, though, problems do not yield to sets of laws, theorems or principles unless perhaps the problems are reduced to artificially simple terms.

Corey further suggests that students learn inductively through case studies in four ways. Learning by discovery : the students task is to interpret and find meaning in the information given in the case, such as pulling together information that may be randomly distributed through the case Learning through probing : the student learns to think incisively, use evidence judiciously, recognise hidden assumptions, and follow a line of reasoning through to the end. Learning through practice : at HBS, MBA students study more than a thousand cases over the two year program. The day-by-day practice leads to ways of analysing case situations which becomes intuitive, and can then be applied to new problem situations, like a doctor, musician or athlete, without having to slowly think through each step in the process. Learning by contrast and comparison : through comparing and contrasting situations in different cases, students learn that what might work in one situation will not work in another. Other by-products of case method teaching include building up experience and skills. Developing a personalised skeleton outline approach provides an initial starting point to case analysis, but this usually evolves from a simplistic check list to an flexible personal approach

methodology as different situations are studied. Practise in presenting analysis in front of peers in the public forum of the classroom usually leads to increased confidence and willingness to contribute. As well as the main issues in the case, students pick up background information about the industries, functional areas and job descriptions involved, and gain vicarious experience to tuck away for possible future use. The life experiences and background of those in the class further broaden these experiences, and often provide totally unexpected perspectives to the class discussion which support the notion that students are learning from each other, instead of from the instructor. The discussion leader has two important roles to fulfil in preparing for and running a case discussion course. The planning and motivational role requires that suitable interesting and appropriate case materials are selected before the start of the course to meet the learning objectives of the course. At the first meeting of the course, the leader must make clear expectations of preparation and state how contribution will be evaluated, by providing guidelines and examples. To encourage pre-class small group discussion, the leader should possibly organise study groups of 3 to 5 students among the class members, if such study groups are unlikely to already exist. The discussion leader role focuses on management of the in-class discussion process. There should be a plan for each class to allocate time to discussion elements such as identifying critical issues, industry and organisation environmental factors, and action alternatives. Perhaps 95% of the time in the class should be for students to contribute, rather than the instructor talking. However, the leader must guide and manage the discussion process with a deft hand, primarily by asking questions at key stages, and selecting contributors, whether volunteers or not. While the leader should have prepared a detailed discussion plan as a guideline, there must exist a large degree of flexibility so that the analysis of the case is seen to come from and be owned by the members of the class.

A New Zealand example of a case discussion course

The Information Technology Policy course has been offered at the University of Waikato since 1989. The students in the undergraduate version of the course are mainly majors in management or information systems in their fourth and final year of study. An executive education version is offered to part-time MBA students, who range in age from early 30s to late 40s. The course is about the use of information technology in organisations, and focuses on the policy level decisions that are made in acquiring and using information systems and computers. In the undergraduate format, the class meets formally once a week for a two hour class discussion, and informally in a one hour pre-class small group discussion. The undergraduate course runs over a 12 week semester, and the MBA course runs over parts of six weekends. When first introduced, the course used case materials developed by the Harvard Business School, and distributed by the Australian Case Clearing House at the University of Melbourne. A catalogue containing abstracts on many thousands of cases is published each year by HBS, organised by subject area and cross indexed by keywords. Sample copies of about 30 cases selected from the catalogue in the area of information systems and computing were reviewed, 2 The cases used were typically 15 to 25 and class sets of the cases selected were ordered. pages in length, and in some cases teaching notes were also available. HBS cases in this

2 The University of Melbourne Graduate School of Management distributes HBS and Australian cases to New Zealand. Another case clearing house is located at the University of Western Ontario. Users with Internet access to the world wide web should investigate the home page at URL http://www.business.uwo.ca/~isworld/iscases.html

subject area are also now available as part of a textbook on Corporate Information Systems Management [1]. While the quality of the HBS cases selected was high, the appropriateness of the material to the New Zealand environment was sometimes questionable. For example, one case dealing with end user computing policy was set in a the city council of a U.S. city, and reported an information systems staff totalling some 250. In New Zealand, no local government would be likely have an IS staff anywhere near this size, and it is doubtful that the IS departments of more than a handful of any kind of organisations in New Zealand would be this large. If case method teaching was to deliver experiences that were relevant and useful to our students, then more appropriate case materials would have to be found or developed. The path chosen was to develop New Zealand cases in the Information Technology Policy area, based mainly on organisations in the Hamilton area. From one to three new cases have been developed each year since 1990, and these cases are listed below.
Case Name CWEPB Clairmont City Council Weddel -CALM NZ Dairy: SISP Gallaghers: MRP II Price Waterhouse: Lotus Notes Min of Maori Development Waikato Polytech:MIS U of Waikato: Finance 1 Carter Holt: Log Scanning Livestock Improvement Dept of Justice Health Waikato Year 1990 1990 1991 1992 1992 1993 1993 1993 1993 1993 1994 1994 1994 Issue consortium development development management adopting new technology strategic IS planning selecting organisation-changing software effect of groupware on company culture cultural impact of technology project management and direction selection of major application software assessment of technology risk evaluation of new technology process impact of court reporting system environment of rapid change

The cumulative set of cases has been bound together each year in subsequent editions of a casebook, together with introductory material on preparing for case method discussions. [5]. At the start of the course, students are given an outline of the course and cases to be discussed, and expectations for preparation and participation given. For an individual case, the following are the expectations of typical time required for pre-class preparation:
Activity preliminary individual preparation small group discussion final individual preparation Time 2.5 to 4 hours 1 hour 1 hour

Students are asked to prepare a one page summary page of their preparation for the case, use it for reference during the class discussion, and then hand it in at the end of the class. These hand-in sheets are not marked, but used in conjunction with in-class contribution to assess the extent to which adequate preparation has been completed. Preparation for and participation in class discussions constitutes 1/3 of the assessment in the course, with assignments and exam comprising the other equal thirds. Participation is recorded and assessed during each class discussion, and feedback given halfway through the course. Great care is taken to ensure that every student has a number of opportunities to contribute significantly to class discussions, although not every student will contribute in every class.

The final examination is also a case, usually one that the class has not previously discussed. Unlike the cases used for class discussion, the examination case has a set of questions to guide the written examination answers.

Cases for case method teaching

The definition of what constitutes a case varies widely, from a few paragraphs used to illustrate a section in a textbook, to an eighty page document used as the basis for a series of class discussions. A good case, from the perspective of being usable in case method teaching, will usually have most of the following characteristics. Decision oriented : the case will describe a business situation in which a decision point has been, or soon will be reached, but does not reveal the outcome. Participation: A case is written in a way that encourages the active participation of the reader in analysis of the situation. Differs from a passive story which reports events as they happened, but does not encourage participation. Discussion generating : the material in the case could lead to a variety of views and analysis being reached by different readers. Substantive: the case might contain from 15 to 50+ pages, with 8-15 pages in the main part, and the balance exhibits (financial statements, background information, etc). Questions: none are usually given. Understanding what the questions should be, before answering them, is an important part of case analysis. A good case3 is one in which the material has not been pre-analysed, neatly packaged, and presented to arrive at an obvious conclusion. Rather, if it is to be an analog of real-world situations, then it might be missing some key information ( to proceed, students must make informed and realistic assumptions), or might contain irrelevant or conflicting information ( for which they may decide to discount importance or ignore entirely). The mix of information in a case may often reflect reality - too much irrelevant information in some places, and not enough in others. Students are expected to do a bit of digging - as in combining information from several different parts of the case, such as company sales and industry growth, to come up with an estimate of changes in market share.

Development of New Zealand case materials

Writing a case to be used as the basis of classroom discussion is not a trivial task, and requires more than just a chronological reporting of events as they occurred in a business situation. The whole process, from initial identification to final product may take six months or more to develop. Unlike law cases, business situations suitable for case development are not usually public knowledge, and sources have to be sought out. The first step in developing a case study is to identify issues and industries of interest, and make preliminary contact with the management of potential organisations. These initial contacts involve showing and explaining examples on the nature of a case and how it will be used, and generally establishing a relationship of trust regarding confidentiality as the potential for the case is explored. Before going too far, the potential case writer must decide if the situation presents substantiative issues to be raised, whether a decision point can be identified, and whether a gap exists in the
3Leenders and Erskines book is a helpful guide to case writing [4].

case study material already available which this case can fill. As the interview data on the situation is collected and drafts are written, it becomes clearer whether the case will be interesting, and will provide sufficient challenge for the class in terms of preparation and classroom discussion, so that decisions to abandon the effort can be made if necessary. As the case writing process nears the final draft stages (six to ten drafts would not be uncommon), and the case is shaping up to be one of merit, discussions are held with the representatives of the organisation on how names and data are to be presented or disguised. In general, business is keen to promote and publicise successes, and prone to cover up failure. Good case studies can come from either of these areas, but it may be much harder to extract the data, and obtain co-operation if the case subject is a painful one. However, our experience in developing the cases identified in this paper is that once organisation contacts are comfortable that materials are being developed which will be used in the limited context of class discussion, rather than being blazed across the front page of the local newspaper, they will be co-operative and provide access to people and information, so long as a relationship of trust has been established. Cases can be very expensive to develop. The Harvard Business School employs professional researchers and writers to develop their case materials under the direction of academic staff, and estimates that it costs an average of US$ 25,000 to complete a case writing assignment. At the University of Waikato, we have a more economic methodology for developing case materials. A masters level course on Information Technology Policy is given which incorporates the development of a usable case study as 1/3 of the course assessment. It is essential that students undertaking this course must themselves have had previous experience in a case method class before undertaking the investigation. Typical enrolments have ranged from one to six each year, and while not every student produces a usable case, the number and quality of cases developed so far has been most gratifying. The case development supervisor has a key role to play in suggesting topics and organisations of interest, providing examples and guidance on the structure of good case studies, and meeting frequently with the students writing the cases, both in informal workshop discussions and individual meetings, during the period of the case writing. It should be noted that developing cases for classroom discussion 4 to develop academic has quite a different end product from using case research methods research papers, although there are some similarities in the data gathering interview methods used in the early stages of each.

Use of computer based groupware

Groupware is a name applied to a class of computer software that facilitates the use and exchange of information and discussion among members of a group. An important category of groupware, conferencing systems, comprises systems that support asynchronous (time independent) contributions to electronic group discussions. Contributions are created by typing a text message, which is stored and can be retrieved by other group members in the context of a specific discussion topic. Unlike randomly arriving electronic mail messages on a variety of topics, participants can read the text of messages contributed to date in the context of a particular conference/topic and with a known group membership, and a reasonable structured and linked discussion can ensue. The metaphor is implemented through participants speaking by entering text messages through a keyboard connected to a machine that manages the database of messages, and listening by reading on the screen the messages presented in conference and topic structures. Conferencing systems can be a very effective medium for group communication and information exchange, particularly where the number of contributors and listeners is large, and where they are separated by distance and time. Thus, a
4 see Lin [7] for a discussion on using case research methods.

conferencing system can act as both a medium of asynchronous discussion on a specific or general subject, facilitating a flow of the latest information and opinion among group members, and as a reference archive containing the contextually organised collection of messages which were contributed to the discussion. There are advantages and disadvantages to electronic group communication[6], and the present implementations available are unlikely to provide an acceptable alternative to case discussion in a classroom. However, there is potential for electronic group communication to be used as a supporting additional channel of communication outside the classroom, between student and instructor, and among students themselves.
5 have been used in case and reading discussion Over the last six years, conferencing systems courses at Waikato as a means to support outside-the-class discussions. These systems use quite different skill sets to classroom discussion, and because of the asynchronous nature of reading and contributing, allow more time to think and reflect before making a considered contribution. This is attractive for shy students, and some overseas students who may lack comfort in using English as a second language. Classroom based case discussion requires physical presence of the student to contribute to the learning of the class, while conferencing systems allow reading and access at a time and place convenient to that person. The use of conferencing systems to support these discussion type of courses has included electronic submission of assignments (the rest of the class can see what others have submitted), posting of pre-discussion analysis synopses (encourage pre-class preparation), and post class discussion of issues which the limited time available in class impeded coverage.

Conclusions
Case method teaching can fulfil a major role in courses which aim to pass on experience, rather than build expertise. Courses such as business policy, marketing, strategic management and others can benefit from the use of case method teaching. However, development of New Zealand case materials is a necessary task to support and enhance cases already available from Australian and U.S. sources. Those with experience in case method teaching, and those with a desire to learn about it must work together to share experiences and approaches to using and developing resources. It would be desirable to hold an annual workshop for NZ case method instructors to discuss these issues.

References
[1] Cash, J. I., McFarlan, F.W, McKenney, J.L and Applegate, L.M . Corporate Information Systems Management Text and Cases , Third Edition, Irwin, 1992. [2] Copeland, M.T. And Mark an Era: The Story of the Harvard Business School, Little Brown, 1958. [3] Corey, E.R. Case Method Teaching(9-581-058) , Harvard Business School, 1980. [4] Leenders, M.R and Erskine, J.A. Case Research: The Case Writing Process, Second Edition, University of Western Ontario, 1973. [5] McQueen, Robert J. Cases in Information Technology Policy, Second Edition, University of Waikato, February, 1994
5 the CoSy conferencing system from the University of Guelph from 1989 to 1992, and Lotus Notes from 1993 on.

[6] McQueen, Robert J. Groupware: Experience in New Zealand. In: Hosking, J.G. Proceedings of the 13th New Zealand Computer Society Conference , 1993, 10-20. [7] Yin, Robert K.Case Study Research: Design and Methods . Sage, 1985.

Case Method Teaching origins of case method teaching in business roots in the teaching of law law cases ready made, in the public record number of cases grows as the decisions of judges are given harvard characteristics of case method teaching A variety of perceptions exist among educators on the usefulness of case method teaching focus on decision builds real world experience nithe classroom in the shoes - character building contribution of discussion leader contribution of class members valued expectation of excellence in contributions by class role of the discussion leader: before the class discussion: set expectations of preparation encourage pre-class small group discussion pre-plan discussion schedule and major contributors, but be flexible enough to deviate in the classroom guide the discussion through the key issues . manage contribution opportunity t o contribute - call on building on prev contributor, rather than isolated point making case materials a key aspect overseas cases size of subject organisation little local knowledge case clearing houses local cases recognised orgs, disguised names Learning that occurs developing an analysis method practice in logical presentation of analysis public criticism of recommended action looking deeper - beyond fixing symptoms to the addressing root causes learning about subject industry, functional area and job position by vicarious experience - keeps interest level up a new zealand example used in information technology policy course - 4th year undergrad, exec ed mba course about...... case materials used

started with us and australian cases now using high proportion of nz cases (give list) need for some international flavour cases as well student prep expectations give table of times final exam a case test ability to analyse a situation, not regurgitate lecture material Case Materials stories versus cases - decision aspect from 25 to 50+ pages, including 8-15 pages of main case, rest exhibits (ie financial) no questions given at end..... students job to develop the right questions so that situation can be understood significant scope - serve 2 hour class discussion not pre-analysed, packaged and neatly presented to arrive at an obvious conclusion..... some necessary information missing (need to make assumptions to develop analysis) some irrelevant or conflicting information provided (just like the real world) lifetime - usually best before 5 years old constantly need new material addressing current issues Development of case materials unlike law, business situations not public effort, cost required to research, write business keen to publicise success, prone to cover up failure my example - masters level course, of which one component (about a third) is to write a case which can be used for future classroom discussion developing case teaching materials quite different from academic case research methods, altho share same in-depth study of an organisation and problem area Use of computer based electronic group communication what is it different skill sets time to think, reflect less reliance on oral confidence - shy, overseas students time independence location independence supporting, additional communication media, not an either/or replacement for classroom discussion used for submission of assignments rest of class can see quality of others wor k ratchet up standards support pre-class preparation conclusions case method teaching can fulfil a major role in courses trying to pass on experience, rather than build expertise business policy, marketing, strategic management and others development of new zealand case materials a necessary task call for a workshop for NZ case method teachers on case development