IESE Dean: The Case Method Isn’t The Problem – It’s Part Of The Answer

Business leaders exercise significant influence over people’s livelihoods, communities and the environment. How business schools prepare them to use that influence responsibly is a serious undertaking that deserves continuous scrutiny. Christopher Marquis’s recent criticism of business schools is a useful reminder that we should be more confident in making the case for business leadership and the contribution management education can make to society.

IESE, for example, was founded in 1958 with the express purpose of developing leaders who seek to have a deep, lasting and positive impact on people and society. Is that an ambitious mission? Absolutely. But how we do that and how we assess our progress are questions I grapple with every day.

Marquis’s essay takes particular aim at the case method as the weak link in this endeavor, portraying it as a marketing gimmick for corporate success and teaching students to replicate the strategies of business “winners.” While I already responded to his essay in a letter to the New York Times, here are my expanded thoughts.

THE CASE METHOD

Case studies are a method, not a worldview. The purpose of a well-written, well-taught case is not to treat the protagonist or organization as heroes, but to put students in the position of someone who must make a complicated decision, often with incomplete information, conflicting priorities, and no obviously correct answer. In other words, it helps them train their judgment.

They also sharpen communication and persuasion skills, as well as the openness to dialogue that leadership requires. Students do not simply decide what they would do in class; they must explain why, listen to alternative viewpoints, reconsider their assumptions and sometimes change their minds.

In addition, the method gives students opportunities to examine hundreds of decisions across countries, industries, organizational structures and roles before they return to the workplace. For example, our MBA students work through more than 400 cases over the course of their program, strengthening their ability to analyze unfamiliar situations.

The criticism that cases “oversimplify and generalize” also misses the very point of the pedagogy. Cases are deliberately incomplete because, in the real world, a manager rarely has all the information at hand before they have to act.

IT TAKES TEACHING SKILL

Of course, the case method does not automatically produce responsible leaders. Its value depends on how it is taught, the cases selected and the willingness of faculty and students to engage with the questions it raises.

This requires considerable teaching skill. Faculty must know how to move a discussion beyond the surface issues to draw out competing perspectives and help students examine the assumptions underlying their own judgments. At IESE, we invest heavily in faculty development and mentoring precisely because we know that effective case teaching requires practice, reflection and feedback.

This is a responsibility for business schools across the sector. Research is essential to a business school’s intellectual contribution, but research and teaching should reinforce one another, and we should not neglect one at the other’s expense. That means reconsidering the incentives, support, and preparation we give the people teaching them.

WHOSE STORIES DO WE TELL?

The types of cases we use in class matter as much as how we teach them. We need cases that reflect the diversity of the business world and the people who lead it.

That means looking beyond large corporations and well-known figures to family-owned businesses, smaller enterprises, entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations. It means exploring different geographies and economic circumstances, rather than assuming that management challenges look the same everywhere.

When these types of cases – whether developed by us or faculty from other schools or regions – are taught in our classrooms, the value of this approach becomes apparent. Our students come from over 60 nationalities and varied professional backgrounds, so they often bring different assumptions about hierarchy, trust, and responsibility to the discussion. These differences can challenge everyone’s initial interpretation, including the professor’s. Students learn not only from the case itself, but also from one another.

The nature of the dilemmas presented is also important. Focusing just on extraordinary crises or dramatic ethical failures is a mistake. Many of the most consequential decisions leaders face are easy to overlook, such as whether to pursue a profitable opportunity that conflicts with an organization’s stated values. That’s why our approach emphasizes the human dimensions of leadership decisions across subjects. Questions about the impact of a certain course of action on employees, communities and other key stakeholders should be integral to understanding a business decision across the core curriculum, not only in electives or as an afterthought.

NO GUARANTEES – BUT NO SUBSTITUTE

Of course, the case method is not the only way to develop these skills, and we, too, complement it with other teaching methods – such as in-company projects or our executive simulation, in which students act as members of an executive committee, report to a real corporate board and engage in negotiations with bankers, trade union representatives, other key stakeholders. But the case discussion remains a powerful setting in which students can practice managerial judgment, reconsider their own assumptions – and, yes, think practically how to have the positive impact they want to have in the world, decision-by-decision.

No business school can guarantee that every graduate will become an exemplary leader. Education operates alongside many other influences, and people ultimately make their own choices. Nor should schools assume that their intentions are sufficient evidence of their impact. We must continually examine what we teach, how we teach it and whether we are helping students become the leaders that society needs.

Yet abolishing business schools or getting rid of the case method would not resolve the questions that make management education necessary. Organizations will always need people capable of making difficult decisions, and society has a legitimate interest in how those people are prepared to lead.

Our task is to help people develop not only the competence to run organizations, but also the judgment to lead them responsibly – and the case method can be an important way to do that.

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Franz Heukamp is dean of IESE Business School, a role he has held since 2016. He is a professor in IESE’s Department of Managerial Decision Sciences, where his research focuses on behavioral decision-making.

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