Case Studies

1. The Purpose and Definition of Case Studies

As you will be using case studies in many of the IMM GSM’s postgraduate courses, it is important that you get off to a good start by learning the proper way to approach and answer them. This guide is a compilation of many renowned practical publications on the subject of case studies which are acknowledged in the list of references.

How to answer a case study assignment  (See page 3.5 for a visual explanation)

How to write up your essay on the case study (See page 3.21 for a visual discussion)

A case study is a description of an actual administrative situation involving a decision to be made or a problem to be solved. It can be a real situation that actually happened just as described, or portions have been disguised for reasons of privacy. Most case studies are written in such a way that the reader takes the place of the manager whose responsibility is to make decisions to help solve the problem. In almost all case studies, a decision must be made, although that decision might be to leave the situation as it is and do nothing. A case study presents an account of what happened to a business or industry over a number of years. It chronicles the events that managers had to deal with, such as changes in the competitive environment, and charts the managers’ response, which usually involved changing the business- or corporate-level strategy.

 A case is used to achieve a business goal. It is a hypothetical, yet realistic, business situation that is developed to give the student a sense of the types of business situations a manager or business owner may encounter on a daily basis; a case analysis prompt usually includes information on the business’s employees, goals and values. The situation requires a decision to be made and a solution to be proposed. Through careful consideration and examination of the information, students personally determine what the best remedy for the problem that the business is facing will be. There is no single solution to the problem, but there is an array of plausible solutions that depend strictly upon the characteristics of the person (people) involved in the decision-making process.