Developing your own case study

CAEA 3231: Integrated Case Study

 What is a case study?
 A story…. real-life events
 About a problem, challenge or opportunity
faced by the company and management
team
 Contents - details, direct quotes from key
parties involved, financial figures, charts,
graphs, statistics
 Function - a basis of an analytic discussion
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 Why develop your own case study?
 Writing a case study involves acquiring a
number of key skills: information gathering,
organisation, analysis and argument.
 Case studies can provide experience in
dealing with genuine situations and problems
in your field of study in a “safe”, non-
threatening learning environment.

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 Why develop your own case study?
 Case studies enable demonstration that you have
understood theories you have studied and can
relate them to real-world situations and
problems.
 Using tools of analysis (eg. PEST, SWOT, etc).
you can act like a detective to discover what has
happened, who was responsible on the basis of
the evidence gathered.
 Next, offer solutions and reasons for your
conclusion/decision.
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 Benefits for you
So case studies provide you with a range of
learning opportunities, including:
 deepening your understanding of theories
through viewing them in relation to practical
situations
 developing a greater appreciation of the
complexity of problems that can arise in
practice

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Benefits for you
So case studies provide you with a range of
learning opportunities, including:
 analysis and evaluation

 expressing ideas concisely and with clarity

 creating convincing, reasoned arguments

 proposing solutions to genuine problems

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 3 basic types of cases
1. Field cases
2. Library cases (public record cases)
3. Armchair cases

You can choose any of the above.

You can choose any topic/subject.
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 1. Field Cases
 Written by professors & business students
 + co-operation of managers/executives who
experienced the events/problems described in
the case
 + Extensive interviews: employees,
managers, executives often reveal more.
(Their names are included in the case study).
 Careful examination of business records can
provide background and context of the event
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 1. Field Cases
 Involves the active co-operation of the
company – only way to know exactly what
happen with certainty
 Often more extensive and thorough than
other types of cases
 Write to companies to gain access or through
your own contact/network

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2. Library Cases
 Do not involve special access to companies.
 Obtain information on companies through
publicly available record.
 E.g.: internet, online news, library archive,
government agencies – library at Securities
Commission Malaysia (Bukit Kiara),
Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia (SSM – Menara
SSM@Sentral)
 E.g.: IPO documents/filings, annual reports,
court documents, acquisition news
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 3. Armchair Cases
 Fictional documents about companies that
do not really exists and events that never
really took place.
 Although lacking in richness of details and
complexity of real events, they may be
useful in introducing basic concepts and
to provoke discussion on key business
issues

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3. Armchair Cases
 Armchair cases are produced when:
 denied access to some key persons and data
of real businesses
 wish to reduce very complex events to a series
of simple options/decisions
 Can be modified and updated without
permission from fictional companies and
managers

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Selecting a topic/subject
 Choose a topic that interests you and your
group members
 Opportunity to discuss and explore with each
other on a few topics
 Consider the audience that you will be
presenting your case to. You may need to
define terms, explain concepts, provide
examples to help audience understand better
 Choose current topics – avoid out of date
topics
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 Beginning your research
 Once your topic is selected, you must
begin preliminary research to ascertain
that you have a viable topic
 You may wish to have a back up of at
least 1 or 2 alternative topic ideas
 Conduct research and review newspaper
archive files in library, local business news
websites, leverage on your own network
to get access to a company
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 Beginning your research
When confident that you have a viable topic, you must make
some choices on the following:
1) The perspective from which the story is to be told. Who is
the decision maker in this case? From whose perspective
will the reader see the details of this case?
2) The start-and-stop dates for the story. Each story begins
at a moment in time and concludes with a decision point
for the manager. You can choose to start from the very
beginning, or select a recent moment then move back to
the beginning to provide other details
3) The level of detail that you plan to include in the story.

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 Beginning your research
Next, make some lists on the following:
 Construct a timeline with key events in chronological order.
This detailed timeline will help to keep key events, issues
and the people involved organized.
 Identify key players in the story, by name and by role.

Give explanation on who they are, what their background

is and why they are important to the case.
 Identify the critical issues in the case, rank them by

importance to the executive decision maker. Provide

explanations on the issues and why each issue is
important.

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 Division of labour
Assign responsibility for various actions amongst your team members:
 Scheduling personal or telephone interviews with key persons in
the case
 Gathering financial data and information about the company
 Conducting historical research on the companies and the people
involved
 Saving photos and screen-grabs for your presentation
 Saving videotape of the evening news, if your case involves
ongoing events or breaking news
 Looking for videos of press conferences, interviews, commercials
that may be useful in framing the case

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 Time to begin writing
 When writing begins:
 Need not be written in sequence
 Need not be written entirely by one person
 Delegate different research and writing tasks to different
team members
 But must flow logically – get one person (the best writer) to
edit and proof read
 Make sure you have reliable sources (preferably more
than 1) for everything you include in the case
 Insert footnotes or endnotes (references) as you
write – going back later to insert a reference will be
more work/error for you
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 Preparing a first draft
 Example: Begin with a quote, an event or some
revealing fact - to grab readers’ attention
 Make the sequence of your events very clear from
the first paragraph
 Next, explain the company’s history, industry,
products or services, annual revenues, size of
company’s employee base and market share
 Then introduce key characters and decision makers
of the case

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 Suggestions for writing
 Explain what happened, when and how
 Identify all relevant assumptions
 Reveal your sources in text, where necessary
 Be specific. Quantify where possible
 Use direct quotes, identifying the person you quote
 Identify issues you don’t understand and questions
you cannot answer. Save them for the executive or
managerial interviews you hope to schedule later.

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 Consult multiple sources
Having only one source is not advisable.
 The principal or sole source could be mistaken, or

have bias views.

 Consult as many sources or viewpoints as you
possibly can
 In telephone or personal interviews: consider front-
line supervisors, hourly workers as well as senior
executives
 Your goal: to achieve accuracy, completeness &
fairness in presenting the facts of the case

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 Consult multiple sources
 Read and research broadly
 Consider foreign publications for different viewpoints.
 Talk to various stakeholders, including customers,
suppliers, shareholders, community and government
officials, regulatory agency officials, competitors
 Speak to neighborhood around the company or others
who may have been affected by the case
 If people won’t talk to you, be polite and offer to show
them the preliminary draft of your work. Offer to let
them edit it or suggest changes.

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 Prepare a second draft
 Assemble what you have written
 Check for logical flow, grammar.
 Interesting to read, ensure correct facts provided
 Consider including tables, figures, stock charts,
diagrams, to help explain the story.
 If you download stock charts from Bloomberg,
Yahoo finance – reference them

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Putting it all together
 Meet regularly as a team
 Discuss about progress, deadlines, next steps
 Throughout the process, respect each other and
offer help as much as you can
 Your team mates will appreciate this and in turn,
give you their best effort
 Task: make it look professional and real/factual

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 Your Case Study
Should consists of 7 sections:
1. Synopsis/Executive Summary/Introduction
2. Problems/Issues/Findings
3. Analysis of alternatives/Discussion
4. Recommended Solutions
5. Implementation
6. References – must contain at least 5 references
7. Appendices (if any)

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 1. Synopsis/Executive Summary/
Introduction

 Outline the purpose of the case study

 Describe the field of research (MA, Tax, Audit,
Strategy) – this is usually an overview of the
company
 Outline the issues and findings of the case study
without the specific details
 Identify the theory that will be used (briefly) -
relate the theory to a practical situation.

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 1. Synopsis/Executive Summary/
Introduction

 Here, the reader should be able to get a clear

picture of the essential contents of the study
 Note any assumptions made (because you may
not have all the information)
 May be necessary to write, for example: “It has
been assumed that…”

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 2. Problems/Issues/Findings
 Identify the problems/issues found in the case. Each
analysis of a problem should be supported by facts
given in the case (together with the relevant theory
and course concepts).
 It is important to search for the underlying problems,
for example: cross-cultural conflict may be only a
symptom of the underlying problem of inadequate
policies and practices within the company.
 This section is often divided into sub-sections, one
for each problem/issue.

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 3. Analysis of alternatives/Discussion
 Summarise the major problems/issues/findings
 Identify alternative solutions to these major
problems (there is likely to be more than one
solution per problem)
 Briefly outline each alternative solution and then
evaluate it in terms of its advantages and
disadvantages
 No need to refer to theory or coursework here.

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 4. Recommended Solutions
 Choose which of the alternative solutions should be
adopted
 Briefly justify your choice explaining how it will solve
the major problems
 This section should be written in a persuasive style –
to convince the reader of the logic of your
recommended solutions
 Here integration of theory and coursework is
appropriate. For example, apply the ideas and
knowledge discussed in the coursework to the
practical situation in the case study.
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 5. Implementation
 Explain what should be done, by whom and
by when
 If appropriate, include a rough estimate of
costs (both financial and time).

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6. References
 Make sure all references are cited
correctly

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7. Appendices (if any)
 Note any original data that relates to
the study but which would have
interrupted the flow of the main body.

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