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Case studies are written summaries of real-
life business situations based upon data
and research. While reading a case study,
a picture of what has happened to a company over a period of time can be had. This could
include events such as organizational change and
strategic decisions within an organization as well
as outside factors and influences. A case study can
be a shortened, second-hand version of a real-life situation. It enables students to appreciate
and analyze real problems and events faced by
people in business. Case studies are also used to
illustrate the theory studied in class and allow that theory
to be applied.
In 1950, Harvard Business School adopted the case study as a teaching technique and remains
a standard for other institutions of higher
education and learning. The basic purpose of instituting
the case method as a teaching strategy was to
transfer much of the responsibility for learning from
the teacher on to the student, whose role, as a
result, shifts away from passive absorption toward
active construction. However, case study research
has drawn from a number of other areas such as the clinical methods of doctors, the
casework technique being developed by social workers,
the methods of historians and the qualitative descriptions provided by quantitative researchers.
This type of case study describes a domain,
which utilizes one or two instances to analyze a
situation. This case study serves to make the
unfamiliar familiar and give readers a common language
for the topic.
In this type of case study, a large-scale investigation goes before implementation.
Where considerable uncertainty exists about
program operations, goals and results, the exploratory
case study helps identify questions, select measurement constructs and develop measures.
The critical instance case study is used to
examine for one or two purposes. First is a very
frequent application, which involves the examination of
a situation of unique interest in
generalizability. Second, which is a rare application, entails
calling into question a highly generalized or
universal assertion and testing it by examining one
instance. This method particularly suits answering
`cause and effect' questions about the instance of concern. |
