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CASESTUDY HANDBOOK

How to Read, Discuss, and Write Persuasively About Cases

William Ellet

Harvatd Business Sebaal Press Bastan, Massachusetts

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CHAPTER 2

WHAT 15 A CASE?

n a case method classroom, both the instructor and student must be active in different ways. Each is dependent on the other to bring about teaching and learning. Instructors are experts, but they rarely deliver their expertise directly.The art of a case method instructor is to ask the right question at the right time, provide feedback on answers, and sustain a discussion that opens up meanings of the case. To illustrate the pattern of question and response, here is a portion of a simulated case discussion of the Harvard Business School case "Malaysia in the 1990s (A)": Instructor:What do you think the prime rninister should do? What should he say at the United Nations? StudentA: He shouldn't give in to the environmentalists. The country should be free to do what it wants inside its borders. That's nobody else's business.The environmentalists should worry about problems in their own countries. Instructor:So he should go it alone, then? Say you were interested in putting your money into the country. Which would you prefer: a government open to discussion and negotiation about issues, or one that takes a hard line with outsiders? StudentA: 1 guess 1 would want the government to be willing to talk. But 1 don't think this is an issue that needs to be discussed. Instructor:You said you think environmental groups should onIy concern themselves with issues in their home countries?

Student A: Yeso

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Instructor: oes Malaysia have a strong environmental movement? D StudentA: 1 . . . 1 don't know: The case doesn't sayo Instructor:Let's assume it doesn't. Does an environmental point of view have any utility for a developing nation? Are there any results that could damage the country's development, or is it just a matter of saving, say,a 11

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12 THE CASE STUDYHANDBOOK...