What are cases? Examples of case solutions. Business cases

What are cases? This question is asked, as a rule, by students who first encountered this term. However, this concept is becoming popular in business communities. Before answering the question about what cases are and giving examples of their solutions, we will go into the history of the origin of the term.

Occurrence of cases

The concept first appeared at Harvard University in 1924. Professors of a prestigious university realized that the textbooks of previous years are not capable of preparing graduates of modern professions. Methods and manuals, which are relevant at this point in time, have not yet been created, and the previous ones are already outdated. Then the professors and thought out business cases - the actual tasks of the present, which it was necessary to solve the graduates. To do this, Harvard was invited to business owners who thoroughly instructed graduate students. Entrepreneurs at the seminars talked about the real problems that their companies faced. After that, the graduate students had to find their solution to these problems. The peculiarity of such training is that there are no right answers. You just need to find the best way out of the situation. In other words, everyone chooses the solution of cases individually.

The innovation of Harvard professors proved to be effective. Alumni already at the exit actually had a semblance of experience. They knew the problems and tasks of successful companies, they could easily cope with the tasks set. In fact, the decision of the cases by the student gave him real practice within the walls of the university. Therefore, since the middle of the twentieth century, this method has spread throughout the world.

Appearance in Russia

In our country, even with the collapse of the socialist system in the nineties of the last century, the education system has long existed on the scale. The country is no longer there, but there are textbooks of the USSR. Even the textbooks on the history of the CPSU with Lenin on the covers finally disappeared only to the mid-nineties of the twentieth century, not to mention other disciplines.

And only from the 2000s. Management cases began to appear in the leading universities of our country. To date, this method is actively developing in Russia. In addition, they open themed case clubs. Particularly popular among schoolchildren and students are the MSTU. E. Bauman, career center NITU "MISiS", etc.

So, what are cases? Let's move on to the very concept.

The concept of

Case (from the Latin casus) is an extraordinary situation, a problem whose solution can not be found in textbooks. A more precise interpretation of the term "incident" is a problem that needs to be solved, but in Russian this term came from English, in which the Latin word casus is pronounced "case".

Students are modeled a problem situation that is as close to the real as possible, and they need to find a solution. The bottom line is that there is no right answer. There is only the opinion of teachers and a real way out of this situation, if the case, of course, was taken from life. Methods of solution, reasoning, collective discussion, etc. are evaluated.

So, what is the case, we explained, now move on to the goals.

Objectives

Despite the fact that case themes can differ from each other, the modeling itself, as a rule, has common goals:

1. Verification of intellectual and analytical data of students.
2. Elaboration of the argumentation of its position.
3. Development of resistance to a stressful situation.
4. Training in skills of time management.
5. Development of communication skills, ability to work in a team.

Case studies during an interview

This method is used not only in educational institutions. Today many firms apply it during the interview. With each passing day the employer looks less and less at the job seeker's resume, on the level of his education, work experience, etc. It is enough to offer a candidate for the position of several cases, and everything becomes clearer about the person than different pieces of paper and recommendations.

Of course, this does not mean that education and experience do not matter. Without them, and at all you can not get to the stage of solving the case. However, it is the last stage that becomes the decisive factor when choosing an employee. In this plan, Google is singled out, which develops its methods for modeling cases. They are individual for each job. Work experience, level of education will not help the candidate if he can not solve the cases. And sometimes they strike the imagination with their deceptive simplicity.

Case Studies

Let us give an example. The company faced the problem of the effectiveness of employees in the sales department. Three people work. The first works with 70% of clients, the second - with 20%, and the third - with 10%. At these rates, the second one is higher than all sales, however it only works with regular customers. The third, on the contrary, works only with new clients, while the former works with both new and permanent ones. The task for the manager is to increase the sales plan and redistribute the flow of customers in such a way that the company receives the maximum profit.

To solve this problem it is necessary to answer the following questions:

• What opportunities for improvement can be in this situation?
• What standards can help in the long term to improve the performance of each seller and sales department in general?

Perhaps the first seller works best with new customers, or with permanent ones. It is also worth trying to swap the second and third seller. Those. The second will only work with new ones, and the third will only work with permanent ones. Perhaps they have a professional crisis, and a change in the situation is needed.

The second example

An interview is conducted for the position of the head of the HR department. The candidate must necessarily have the quality, such as the ability to show flexibility and avoid unnecessary conflicts. It is proposed to solve the following case: the CEO insisted that the company take the daughter of an influential person. The previous manager gave her the post of secretary-referent. The girl herself did not show herself, she did not identify herself with the company and she did not aspire to career growth. To this is added the lack of experience in other enterprises.

During the time of work, her main skills were: receiving incoming documents, maintaining records, packaging on the documentation folders. Six months later, the place of the leading specialist in document management was vacated. The CEO insisted that this position was taken by this girl. However, the company has many other employees who deserve to be promoted. In this task the competitor needs to make a choice: either go against the general leadership, or work with a dissatisfied collective.

Perhaps the candidate will find an acceptable option for both the CEO and the team. Examples of cases do not have the right solutions. Each case is individual.

There are not only business cases, but cases in other areas: pedagogy, medicine, jurisprudence. In each profession, you can simulate a problem situation.