PASSION FOR LEARNING CASE &

CASE METHOD
PGP Orientation
20/6/2015
Prof. Avinash Mulky
Slides Courtesy Prof. Ganesh Prabhu

Nature of Management Activity

Management is
the continuing process of organizing human, physical,
technical and knowledge elements
towards the achievement of a stated mission in line
with a vision and a value system
and under constrained resource conditions.

Managerial Decision Making

Management decisions often involve the projection of

consequences into a highly uncertain future.

Management decisions have enormous variety and most

decisions depend on the decision context.

Management decisions can relate to both repetitive and

unique situations.

Management decisions often have to be taken on an imperfect

knowledge of underlying phenomena.

Management decisions often have to be taken on basis of

untested cause-effect relationships.

Data for Managerial Decision Making

All the data required for taking good managerial decisions is

rarely if ever available or complete.

Data used can range from subjective to objective.

Data used can range from quantified to judgmental.

Probability judgments, expectations and intuitions are needed

to prop up management decisions.

Good Managerial Decision Making

Managers often need to create new responses to managerial

situations never experienced before.

Good managerial decisions making requires the ability to

accumulate, classify, analyze and build upon a variety of earlier
managerial situations and the managerial responses that were
then evoked.

Managerial experience can over time build the intuition of

practicing managers and help them improve judgmental ability
to take better decisions.

Case Analysis as Pedagogy

Case analysis is a major pedagogy in management as:

Cases help you develop analytical and judgmental skills for

taking a variety of managerial decisions.

Cases help you learn to ask good questions.

Cases expose you to a variety of organizations and managerial

situations.

Nature of Management Cases

Management cases are usually from real life.
Involve some decision making situations.
Provide or provoke multiple alternatives.
For teaching, cases are written such that:
the information (usually complete)
the decision making issues and
the objectives (one or many)
are available though the actual decisions taken and
the reasons for taking them are suppressed.

Nature of Management Cases

In most (if not all!) teaching cases:

The critical issues are not explicitly identified.

The information is ambiguous and contradictory.

Some information may be redundant or irrelevant.

Typically there is no unique answer.

Case Preparation

Read the case once rapidly to get an idea of its main issues
& types of information given.

Reread the case carefully and seek to understand the major

issues faced by the decision maker(s).

Decide on issues to be resolved and seek balanced and

practical answers to them.

Develop recommendations and consider their

implementation issues and backup carefully.

Show why alternates are not recommended.

Learning Through Case Studies

Stage 1: Self study and analysis of the case.
Stage 2: Small group discussion if possible for new perspectives
from others in group.
Stage 3: Class discussion of case learning from presenting
your analysis and getting challenged by other students and
faculty.
Stage 4: Reflection on what you learnt that can be applied
beyond the case context.