Framework for Case Analysis of the Harvard Business Publishing Coursepack
Prior to meeting with your team, purchase and read the case study, Alphabet Eyes New Frontiers. Carefully read the Framework for Case Analysis. Discuss and create answers (and additional questions) for items 3-5. Your team executive summary should include your intellectual community process and your consensus (and/or dissenting) answers to items 3-5.
Framework for Case Analysis (Adapted from the original document published by the UMass College of Management)
Part I Analyzing a Case
What is this document?
You will be asked throughout your Graduate experience to analyze cases. Because there are many ways to approach cases, the CM faculty has agreed upon a framework for case analysis that you will be asked to learn in MGT 650. This framework will help you throughout your Graduate experience in thinking about cases as well as in preparing written reports.
UC Note: The SL and DEL curricula are not case-based. This document is intended to illustrate and explain my two-step case study assignment. My notes appear in bold blue font throughout.
What is a case?
A case is a story—usually a true story, but not always—that illustrates business and management theories and concepts you are studying in a course and/or presents a problem or series of problems for you to solve. A case usually ends with a dilemma or critical issue faced by a particular character or organization depicted in the case. Sometimes a case will be accompanied by a set of questions, usually theory-based, that your instructor expects you to answer. Some questions will be devoted to figuring out the problems imbedded in the case and the causes of those problems; others will ask you to determine a course of action to take in the future. These questions will be provided between steps one and two. More complex cases usually contain a variety of types of information, e.g. industry and economic data, financial reports, policies and procedures, market share and pricing data, descriptions of personnel and other resources, job descriptions, individual perceptions, and dialogue. Due to their complex nature, these cases demand your careful, sustained attention; indeed, each case contains subtleties that are likely to be discerned only by several re-readings and discussions with other students.
Why do professors ask students in the Graduate Programs to analyze cases?
Through the process of analyzing cases, professors believe that Graduate students can learn the value of: [1] responding actively and constructively to the conflicts of organizational life by: suspending judgment about personalities as well as about courses of action; differentiating between facts and opinions; graciously giving up an opinion if it is shown to be inadequate; integrating what one learns through discussions with others in order to progress in ones own thinking; examining the total situation rather than focusing on the most obvious or pressing elements of that situation; gaining multiple perspectives on a situation by using theory, concepts and research findings; understanding the continually evolving interrelationships among the factors in a situation; acknowledging what is not known or understood by the student analyst about a situation; explicitly assessing and acknowledging the degree of confidence the student analyst is able to have in what he/she has come to understand about the case; recognizing that a situation can involve many problems and that different stakeholders will probably experience different problems; setting priorities—deciding which problems deserve immediate attention; developing an action orientation—a willingness to take calculated risks under conditions of incomplete information, inadequate resources, and often imperfect solutions; appreciating the complexity of transforming proposed solutions into comprehensive, detailed plans for action; and, seeking to understand the consequences and limits of managerial actions.
As part of this process, I am asking you to analyze your case in the context of the material and discussions about global leadership we have covered in the past three weeks.
Will all instructors in the Graduate Programs use cases in the same way?
The life of an Graduate student would be easier if the answer to this question were yes. The truth, however, is that cases can be used in a variety of ways, even by a single instructor. One UMass/Boston faculty member has wisely observed that cases can be used as:
the hook—a snappy introduction to a topic;
the curtain raiser—a hook with conceptual implications;
the example—an illustration of a concept, frequently predefined;
the exercise—a test of the students mastery of the courses conceptual material
the rehearsal—an opportunity for the student to try out skills or behavior related to or in the context of the course material.[2]
When instructors use cases for the first three purposes, they almost never expect students to produce a full-fledged case analysis. Instead, the cases, if they are discussed in class at all, usually are used by instructors to engage students in thinking concretely about conceptual material presented in course readings. Indeed, such cases are usually quite brief—a paragraph or two, or a page or two, in length. However, when cases are used by instructors in the form of an exercise or rehearsal, students are usually required to produce a systematic analysis in the form of an oral presentation or written paper.
My purpose in creating this assignment is related to items # 4 & 5. I am interested in the ways you may apply the theories and concepts presented and discussed and as a kind of rehearsal for your application presentation.
If you are asked to analyze a case, what are the key elements your instructors might ask you to consider?
You rarely will be asked to analyze cases the same way every time, even by a particular instructor in a particular course. Nevertheless, the analysis elements described below cover most of the ground that is likely to be of interest to instructors in your Graduate courses. In thinking through a case, you may be asked by your instructor to consider all twelve of the elements described below. Most often, however, your instructor will ask you to consider only a few of the elements. There are many possible reasons that an instructor might exclude elements from consideration: sometimes an instructors goals for a particular class session can be met only if students are asked to concentrate on a few selected elements; sometimes elements are excluded because they are not relevant to a particular field of study; sometimes elements are excluded because they interfere with a particular instructors carefully considered way of teaching cases.
No matter which elements you are asked to use, make careful notes as you conduct your analysis. You will need to bring to class well-organized and detailed references to the evidence of the case if you are to participate effectively in class discussions.
Elements of Analysis
1. Develop a detailed chronology of events—both major events and those that seem, on first reading, relatively minor. In doing so, pay careful attention to how certain you can be about each event.
2. Describe the key economic and policy issues and trends in the country(ies) where the firm is operating.
3. Describe the industry in which the firm is operating—perhaps including such information as competitors, new entrants, substitute products, suppliers, and the end-use and intermediary buyers.
4. Identify the relevant cast of characters (often called stakeholders).
a. Acknowledge to yourself whether you like some of these stakeholders better than others. Have you tended to jump to conclusions about what kind of people they are (e.g. he cant be trusted; shes the perfect boss; that procurement department is full of obstructionists)? b. Look carefully for evidence that might contradict, in any way, your first impressions.
5. Describe each stakeholders problems, goals (or demands), and concerns.
a. For each stakeholder, look for evidence that something has happened in the case that the stakeholder finds troublesome and seems to consider a problem.
b. Identify the assumptions being made by each stakeholder, and any apparent biases of each stakeholder.
c. Identify the goals (sometimes stated as explicit demands) of each stakeholder.
d. Then, as best you can, identify the concerns underlying these demands. In other words, what does the behavior (words, actions) of the stakeholder suggest to you about why that person (or group) wants what he/she seems to want?
6. Evaluate the quantitative information that you have available in the case.
a. Identify assumptions underlying the data.
b. Examine consistency among units.
c. Determine the quality of data, e.g. completeness, accuracy, possible biases, consistency among multiple sources.
d. Use estimation to gauge whether results seem right.
e. Identify ways in which the data may oversimplify an issue or situation.
f. Summarize the quantitative information.
g. Be prepared to express the summary in a variety of forms: in words, in visual/graphical displays, in tables of numerical results, in analytical formulations.
h. Look for patterns among the results that help you gain insight into the issues of the case.
7. Use theory, concepts, models, and research findings that you have been studying in your class to enrich your view of the case and help you to identify problems.
How does __________ (theory/model/concept) help me understand ___________?
Using a variety of different concepts, theories and models to organize your investigation will allow you to reframe and gain multiple perspectives on the issues of the case. As you complete your various inquiries, you will find that some have enabled you to gain important new insights about the case, while others told you little of significance. In your written report, of course, you should write about those inquiries that were most meaningful.
The steps below describe a process that you may follow to answer a conceptually-grounded question:
a. Define the concept (theory, model). Be prepared, if your instructor asks you, to quote it from the text or relevant readings; this will ensure that you are working with the appropriate conceptual material and that you have a framework for organizing evidence from the case.
b. Look in the case for evidence that seems relevant to all or some portion of the definition that you quoted in (a). Be prepared, if your instructor asks you, to quote that evidence, also noting where it is located in the case and identifying what is happening at that moment in the case.
c. Next, express in your own words how the piece of evidence you quoted in (b) fits all or some part of the definition you quoted in (a).
d. Repeat (a) and (b) as many times as necessary: to search for evidence concerning all elements of the concept, theory or model, not just the ones for which evidence is easy to find; and to locate all relevant evidence from the case, not just an obvious example or two. Sometimes you will be unable to find evidence relevant to a particular part of the definition. If this happens, be sure to acknowledge explicitly that you were unable to locate evidence. If you need to make assumptions about certain aspects of the case, do so, and clearly state what those assumptions are.
e. When you have finished your analysis of the evidence, express in your own words how you would answer the question posed about the case. Be sure to: describe how confident you are about your conclusion, given the amount of evidence you have found; and describe how your conclusion is affected by the direction of the evidence (e.g. the evidence all points in one direction, is evenly divided, or is mixed but slightly weighted in one direction).
8. Identify additional information that you need to fully analyze this case.
In analyzing a case, you often find that you must make certain assumptions because essential information has not been included by the case writer. In real life, too, key pieces of information often are missing, or cannot be obtained because the collection of the information would take too long or be too costly. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that relevant pieces of information are missing and that your conclusions, therefore, might be flawed.
9. Identify the basic issues that you must confront and the relationships among them.
a. Considering everything that you have learned in the steps above, identify the key problems that must be solved. Sometimes, one problem cannot be solved without first making at least some progress on the solution of another—so be attentive to how problems overlap or interrelate.
b. Also, identify problems that are less central but still deserving of attention.
c. Then, identify problems that can safely be ignored for the foreseeable future.
d. Before considering additional analysis elements, be sure that you have fully described the existing situation, or what in quantitative modeling might be called the base case.
This is the dividing line between Steps 1 & 2 of your case analysis assignment. Items 1-9 will be discussed in Week/Unit 4. Items 10 forward will become part of your case analysis presentation in Week/Unit 5.
10. Keeping in mind the whole array of problems that must be solved, create as at least two different courses of action, each of which seems likely to solve these problems. Be specific and practical.
a. In creating courses of action, you should carefully consider at what level (e.g. individual, team, department, organization) action must be taken.
b. In creating courses of action, you also must think carefully about how much specificity is required. In a manufacturing case, for example, you will have to decide whether to model each step in the production process separately, or to treat the production process as a black box with raw materials as inputs and finished products as outputs.
11. For each possible course of action, think through the consequences. Almost every action has negative as well as positive consequences. Think carefully about: a. how each course of action will be perceived by each stakeholder; b. how each course of action will affect other problems that must be resolved; c. the difficulties you will encounter in actually implementing the course of action under consideration; d. how implementing the course of action you propose may create new problems; and, e. how uncertainties in your evidence and assumptions you have made during your analysis might affect the courses of action that you are considering. Consider what you can do to prepare for the possibility that the assumptions you made might prove to be wrong.
12. Decide on a set of recommendations.
a. Prepare a rationale for your recommendations, based on other elements of your analysis, that anticipates challenges and counter-arguments that are likely to made by others; b. Create a plan for implementing your recommendations; and, c. Establish criteria for assessing how well the implementation plan is working.
FRAMEWORK FOR CASE ANALYSIS
Part II Writing About Your Case Analysis
If you are asked to produce a written report about your case analysis, what format should you use?
There is no one best way to write a report about your case analysis. The following outlines your instructors preferred case presentation format. Feel free to modify when and if it makes your analysis more clear. Use and adapt the provided Powerpoint template as the basis for your case presentation.
A. Introduction
in a few sentences describe the case
in a sentence or two, tell the reader how your paper will be organized, i.e. what the major sections will be and the order in which they will be presented.
B. Body (should include four major sections: identification of major stakeholders and their problems, goals and concerns; identification of problems; analysis of alternative solutions; recommended solutions)
Identification of Stakeholders Problems, Goals, and Concerns
1. For each stakeholder, identify events in the case that that stakeholder finds troublesome and would consider a problem; in doing so, quote the case.
2. Identify the assumptions being made by each stakeholder, and the apparent biases of each stakeholder; in doing so, quote the case.
3. Identify the goals (sometimes stated as explicit demands) of each stakeholder; in doing so, quote the case.
4. Then, as best you can based on the evidence of the case, identify the concerns underlying these demands; again, quote the case.
Identification of Problems or Critical Issues
1. Identify the key problems that must be solved. Explain with reference to appropriate concepts, theories, models, and/or research findings—and the evidence of the case. Quote evidence to justify your assertions. (Note: this is likely to be a lengthy part of your analysis.)
2. Also, identify problems that are less central but still deserving of attention, as well as problems that can safely be ignored for the foreseeable future.
Analysis of Alternative Solutions
1. Keeping in mind the whole array of problems that must be solved, describe two or three alternatives courses of action that might be taken to resolve these problems. Be specific and practical.
2. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of each course of action, with reference to the following: how the course of action is expected to resolve the key problems presented; how the recommended course of action will affect other remaining problems; how the recommended course of action will be perceived by each stakeholder; the difficulties you will encounter in actually implementing the course of action under consideration; how implementing the proposed course of action may create new problems; and, how uncertainties in your evidence and assumptions you have made during your analysis might affect the courses of action that you are considering.
Recommended Solutions
Present a detailed recommendation, based on your analysis of alternative solutions:
Present a rationale for your recommendation that anticipates challenges and counter-arguments.
Describe a plan for implementing your recommendations.
Describe the criteria that could be used to assess how well that implementation plan is working.
C. Conclusion
Briefly summarize the essential difficulties posed in this case and the relevance of recommended solutions.
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[1] We are indebted for some ideas in this section to: C. Roland Christensen, Teaching By the Case Method. Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1981, pp. 12-14; Pearson Hunt, The Case Method of Instruction, Harvard Educational Review, XXI, 3 (Summer 1951): 186.
[2] Mark Schlesinger, One of Those If or Maybe ThingsCase Analysis Reconsidered. Proposal for a Presentation/Paper, 7th Natl Conference on Intellectual Skills Development, Nov. 11-12, 1988. Grand Rapids, MI. 1
How to Write a Case Study
What Is a Case Study?
A case study is a puzzle that has to be solved. The first thing to
remember about writing a case study is that the case should have a problem
for the readers to solve. The case should have enough information in it that
readers can understand what the problem is and, after thinking about it and
analyzing the information, the readers should be able to come up with a
proposed solution. Writing an interesting case study is a bit like writing a
detective story. You want to keep your readers very interested in the situation.
A good case is more than just a description. It is information arranged in
such a way that the reader is put in the same position as the case writer was at
the beginning when he or she was faced with a new situation and asked to
figure out what was going on. A description, on the other hand, arranges all the
information, comes to conclusions, tells the reader everything, and the reader
really doesn’t have to work very hard.
When you write a case, here are some hints on how to do it so that your
readers will be challenged, will “experience” the same things you did when you
started your investigation, and will have enough information to come to some
answers.
There are three basic steps in case writing: research, analysis, and the
actual writing. You start with research, but even when you reach the writing
stage you may find you need to go back and research even more information.
The Research Phase:
1. Library and Internet research. Find out what has been written before,
and read the important articles about your case site. When you do this,
you may find there is an existing problem that needs solving, or you may
find that you have to come up an interesting idea that might or might not
work at your case site. For example, your case study might be on a
national park where there have been so many visitors that the park’s
eco-system is in danger. Then the case problem would be to figure out
how to solve this so the park is protected, but tourists can still come. Or,
you might find that your selected site doesn’t have many tourists, and
one reason is that there are no facilities. Then the case problem might
be how to attract the right kind of businesses to come and build a
restaurant or even a hotel — all without ruining the park.
Or your case study might be on historic sites that would interest tourists
IF the tourists knew where the sites were or how to get to them. Or
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maybe your case study is about how to interest people in coming to your
country so they can trace their familys historic roots (origins).
Once you have decided on the situation or issue you would like to cover
in your case study (and you might have several issues, not just one),
then you need to go to the site and talk to experts.
2. Interview people who know the place or the situation. Find
knowledgeable people to interview — they may be at the site itself or they
work in a government office or company that deals with the historic
preservation. In addition to people who work in the site, talk to visitors.
When you are interviewing people, , ask them questions that will help
you understand their opinions, questions like the following:
“What is your impression of the site (maybe its an old fort, or a burial
site, or an excavation of historic interest)?”
“How do you feel about the situation?”
“What can you tell me about how the site (or the situation) developed?”
“What do you think should be different, if anything?
You also need to ask questions that will give you facts that might not be
available from an article, questions like:
“Would you tell me what happens here in a typical day?”
“What kind of statistics do you keep? May I have a copy?
“How many businesses are involved here?”
When you ask a question that doesn’t let someone answer with a “yes”
or a “no” you usually get more information. What you are trying to do is
get the person to tell you whatever it is that he or she knows and thinks —
even though you don’t always know just what that is going to be before
you ask the question. Then you can add these facts to your case.
Remember, your readers can’t go to your site, so you have to “bring it to
them.”
The Analysis Phase:
1. Put all the information in one place. Now you have collected a lot of
information from people, from articles and books. You can’t include it all.
So, you need to think about how to sort through it, take out the excess,
and arrange it so that the situation at the case site will be
understandable to your readers. Before you can do this, you have to put
all the information together where you can see it and analyze what is
going on.
2. Assign sections of material to different people. Each person or group
should try to figure out what is really important, what is happening, and
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what a case reader would need to know in order to understand the
situation. It may be useful, for example, to put all the information about
visitors on one chart, or on a chart that shows visitors to two different
sites throughout a year.
3. Try to formulate the case problem in a few sentences. When you do
this, you may find that you need more information. Once you are
satisfied with the way you have defined the problem you want your
readers to think about, break the problem down into all its parts. Each
one represents a piece of the puzzle that needs to be understood before
the problem can be solved. Then spend some time discussing these
with the others in your group.
For example, suppose:
a. Your heritage site doesn’t have many visitors, but many people say
they would like to visit if it had services
b. There is unemployment in the village around the site,
c. The town is big enough to be able to accommodate many more
visitors, and
d. The surrounding environment (animals, trees and plants) need to be
protected from too many visitors
e. The town is far away, but there are no places to eat or sleep around
there
f. The government owns the location, but the government does not
want to own and operate either a restaurant or a hotel
Ask yourselves: How much information do people who will read your case
study need to have in order to be able to discuss items a through f?
One answer to “a.” is that they need to know data about past numbers of
visitors, and they need to know what evidence exists that more people want to
visit but are discouraged from going there. Your evidence will come from the
articles and statistics you have gathered, and from the interviews you have
completed.
Once you have broken down the problem into pieces, you can analyze the
information you now have and see if you can think about possible answers to
each of the pieces. If you have enough information, then you can think about
how to write the case study itself.
Writing the Case Study:
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1. Describe the problem or case question you want the reader to solve.
In a detective story, the crime happens right at the beginning and the detective
has to put together the information to solve it for the rest of the story. In a case,
you can start by raising a question. You can, for example, quote someone you
interviewed. For example, suppose you interviewed a tourist official and she
told you she thought more people should be interested in visiting, and she
cant understand why they dont come. Then you could write something like
this,
The historic town of XX is located in the mountains of country X. The
town tourism supervisor, Mrs. Joan Smith, said that she thought “many
more people should visit here, but they just dont come. I dont know why
maybe we don’t have the right kinds of places for them to eat or sleep
and it’s too far to travel in one day from the nearest big city.”
The case writers wondered what would have to happen in order to make
the town more attractive to tourists..
Because you are the authors, you and your fellow students, can write questions
like this and set the stage for the rest of your case story. What your introduction
does is give clues to the reader about what they should be thinking about.
Once you have told the reader what one person associated with the tourist area
thinks the problem is — how to make the place more attractive — you can give
them the information they need to come to their own conclusions
2. Organize the sections of the case. You will probably need to organize your
information under topics like the following:
a. Introduction to the problem
b. Background on the place — where is it, how big, what climate, etc. — this
part should be a brief, overall description. Think about having 2 pages of
written material, photos, or even a video, so that your readers can really
get a feel for what the place. looks like. Summarize the main features of
the place. What makes it special?
c. Visitors to the place — you want to make the reader do some work, so
you can say that the number of visitors are shown on a table or chart you
have compiled. You might want to include a chart that shows the
number of visitors that come to another similar kind of place that does
have facilities. This will let your readers make some comparisons. If
possible, include information you received when you talked to visitors –
what did they like, dislike? What did visitors think should happen to
make the place more attractive?
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d. Government Policy — include information about what government policy
is with respect to this place. What is allowed, what is not allowed. Can
policy be changed, and by whom?
e. Business Opportunities in — you have already said there are not enough
facilities for tourists. Well, now you need to provide information on what it
might cost to put a nice restaurant for tourists. Suppose in one of your
interviews, you talked to a business person who said that it would cost
$25,000 to put a snack bar by the historic site. You need to give your
reader that information, but that’s not all. You also have to provide some
information about what a typical snack bar menu would have, how much
the food would cost to make and sell, and what price the owner would
have to put on each item so that the price would not be too high for
people to pay. And your reader has to figure out how many people would
have to eat there in order for the snack bar to make money. This is where
the statistics come in. Are there enough people who visit now that the
snack bar cold expect to make money? How about the number of
visitors to the other similar palce — what if that same number of people
came. How would the snack bar do then?
f. Potential employees. You can’t add facilities without adding people to
staff them. Are there enough people in the local community to fill the
new jobs that would be added? Do they have the right kind of education
and training to fill those jobs, or would the snack bar owner, or the new
hotel owner, have to train people, or bring people in from other
locations? Could the local school system provide the necessary
training?
You don’t have to do all the calculations for the reader, but you need to do them
yourself so that you know the reader will have enough information in the case to
do them. For example, before you can decide whether a snack bar might be a
good idea, you have to estimate whether you could get more visitors –and how
many more. Can you match the number that go to the other similar place that
has facilities? Or is your location so much farther to travel that you don’t think
that many more people would come. And just how many people have to use the
snack bar in order for the owner to get back his $25,000 investment and also
make some profit to pay himself a salary? This kind of analysis is really
looking at the question of what kind of business opportunities are there. Would
a souvenir shop be a good idea?
Did you do this kind of analysis before writing? If not, then you will have to stop
and think some more. Maybe you will need to find more information before you
can continue writing.
g. Environmental Implications for Animal and Plant Life of Changes in the
Area. Since you already know that more visitors will cause a change, an
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important factor to consider is what will be the impact on plants and
animals. Some places protect the plants by only letting visitors walk on
special paths and visitors cannot pick any flowers or plants. Others say
visitors can’t feed the animals, or rules say visitors must hire a guide if
they are going into certain areas. Whatever the situation, you need to
consider this question very carefully.
Other sections of the case. Depending on the case you are researching and
writing, the sections of the case will need to be organized so that each type of
information is in its own section and understandable to the reader. You might
not use all the sections described above, but certainly your case study will need
to consider the business and economic implications of tourists for your area,
and equally important, the implications for the plant and animal life. Tourism
has economic implications and environmental implications. Good planning
must take both into account.
Conclusion. Your case will need a conclusion. Rather than putting in your
answer in the case, leave the reader with some more questions. For example,
you might have learned that there is a government policy that says “No private
enterprise is allowed to change any part of the historic site.” So you might
conclude with a paragraph like this:
