HBS Wins Big In Case Study Method Awards: MBA News

By Tim Dhoul Updated Sep 05, 2019

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Introduction
Winners in different management fields recognized by The Case Centre

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If last night’s Oscars have left you with a severe case of award-season fever, fear not, there were also plenty of awards on offer to business schools around the world, in an annual celebration of the hallmark of MBA teaching: the case study method.

In the 25th year of The Case Centre’s accolades for case writing and teaching, and the fifth year since it was extended out from Europe and onto a global platform, the place where the case study method began, Harvard Business School (HBS), picked up the most awards.

However, recognition of a faculty member at an Indian business school in a parallel of the US film industry’s lifetime achievement award shows how far the case study method has travelled since its earliest beginnings at HBS.

The Case Centre’s director, Richard McCracken said that Debapratim Purkayastha, vice dean at Hyderabad’s ICFAI Business School (IBS), “has been instrumental in advancing the case method in India,” arguing that the award shows “case excellence is also being achieved in new learning environments across the globe.”

- Learn more about the case study method.

Winners in different management fields recognized by The Case Centre

Aside from its ‘Outstanding Contribution’ award, the year’s most popular case studies were recognized across nine different fields of management, with an overall award given to the single most popular study in The Case Centre’s collection.

Harvard Business School not only picked up the overall award, for a case that considered the enduring ‘Cola Wars’ between Pepsi and Coca-Cola, but faculty at the school also scooped wins in five of The Case Centre’s nine categories, including entrepreneurship and ‘Knowledge, Information and Communication Systems Management’, where a coauthored paper by Benjamin Edelman - the professor who recently attracted attention for taking a Chinese restaurant to task for its misleading website prices - was recognized.

“Harvard Business School’s success in the 2015 Awards shows that effective cases from established case producing institutions are still breaking new ground,” said McCracken.

Elsewhere, representatives of HEC Paris, Stanford GSB and Geneva School of Economics and Management scored victories in the marketing, economics and CSR categories respectively, with IBS’s Purkayastha again recognized, this time as a coauthor, in the organizational behavior section.

In its promotion of the case study method as an essential teaching tool in business education, The Case Centre also hands out awards for the winners of two case writing competitions, and this year added an award for best teacher.

The teaching award went to the appropriately-named Casey Lichtendahl, who applies data science principles and techniques to his discussion-based teaching at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Meanwhile, the gong for best ‘New Case Writer’ went to Copenhagen Business School’s Laurel C. Austin, while two faculty members from Vlerick Business School came out top for their writing on the topic of ‘Digital Transformation’.

Written by

Tim Dhoul

Tim is a writer with a background in consumer journalism and charity communications. He trained as a journalist in the UK and holds degrees in history (BA) and Latin American studies (MA).