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What Is A Case Study

A case study describes a real administrative situation or problem to be solved. The case method is a learning tool where students analyze and discuss case studies with an instructor guiding discussion. To analyze a case study, students should define the problem, analyze the data, generate alternatives, evaluate alternatives, and select a preferred alternative with an action plan. Key aspects to analyze for a company case study include the company's history, internal strengths and weaknesses, external environment, SWOT analysis, corporate and business strategies, organizational structure, and making recommendations.

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Priyanka Ravi
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3K views

What Is A Case Study

A case study describes a real administrative situation or problem to be solved. The case method is a learning tool where students analyze and discuss case studies with an instructor guiding discussion. To analyze a case study, students should define the problem, analyze the data, generate alternatives, evaluate alternatives, and select a preferred alternative with an action plan. Key aspects to analyze for a company case study include the company's history, internal strengths and weaknesses, external environment, SWOT analysis, corporate and business strategies, organizational structure, and making recommendations.

Uploaded by

Priyanka Ravi
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is a Case Study?

A case study is a description of an actual administrative


situation involving a decision to be made or a problem to
be solved. It can be a real situation that actually happened
just as described, or may included portions that have
been disguised for reasons of privacy

1
The Case Method as a Learning
Tool
The case method of analysis is a learning tool in which
students and instructors participate in direct discussion
of case studies
In the case method, students teach themselves, with the
instructor being an active guide

2
How to do a Case Study

 A week before, you must give :


1. The case study,
2. Questions that will need to be answered, and
3. Sometimes advise some reading assignments that
have some relevance to the case subject.

3
How to Analyze the case
1. Defining the issue(s)
2. Analyzing the case data
3. Generating alternatives
4. Selecting decision criteria
5. Analyzing and evaluating alternatives
6. Selecting the preferred alternative
7. Developing an action/implementation plan

4
Defining the issue(s)/Problem
Statement
1. What appears to be the problem(s) here?
2. How do I know that this is a problem?
3. What are the immediate issues that need to be addressed?
This helps to Differentiate between importance and
urgency for the issues identified. Some
Important issues are those that have significant effect on:
4. Profitability,
5. Strategic direction of the company,
6. Source of competitive advantage,
7. Morale of the company's employees, and/or
8. Customer satisfaction.
5
Analyzing Case Data

1. Why or how did these issues arise? You are trying to


determine cause and effect
 Resources such as materials, equipment, or supplies, and
People who transform these resources using
 Processes which create something of greater value.
2. Who is affected most by this issues?
3. What are the constraints and opportunities implicit to this
situation

6
Analyzing Case Data
4. What do the numbers tell you? You need to take a look at
the numbers given in the case study and make a judgment as
to their relevance to the problem identified.
 Not all numbers will be immediately useful or relevant, but
you need to be careful
 Not to overlook anything. When deciding to analyze
numbers, keep in mind why
you are doing it, and what you intend to do with the result.
Use common sense and comparisons to industry standards
when making judgments as to the meaning of your answers
to avoid jumping to conclusion

7
Generating Alternatives
1. Be realistic! While you might be able to find a dozen
alternatives, keep in mind that they should be
realistic and fit within the constraints of the situation.
2. The alternatives should be mutually exclusive, that
is, the cannot happen at the same time.
3. Not making a decision pending further investigation
is not an acceptable

8
Generating Alternatives
4. Doing nothing as in not changing your strategy can be
a viable alternative;
5. Avoid the provided it is being recommended for the
correct reasons, e meat sandwich method of providing
only two other clearly undesirable, alternatives to
make one reasonable, alternative look better by
comparison.
6. Keep in mind that any alternative chosen will need to
be implemented at some point, and if serious
obstacles exist to successfully doing this, then you
are the one who will look bad for suggesting it.
9
Key Decision Criteria (KDC)
1. Improve (or at least maintain) profitability,
2. Increase sales, market share, or return on investment,
3. maintain customer satisfaction, corporate image,
4. Be consistent with the corporate mission or strategy,
5. Within our present (or future) resources and
capabilities,
6. Within acceptable risk parameters,
7. Ease or speed of implementation,
8. Employee morale, safety, or turnover,
9. Retain flexibility, and/or,
10 10. Minimize environmental impact.
Evaluation of Alternatives
set up a simple table with key decision criteria as
columns and alternatives as rows, and write this
section based on the table. Each alternative must be
compared to each criteria and its suitability ranked in
some way, such as met/not met, or in relation to the
other alternatives, such as better than,or highest.
Another method that can be used is to list the
advantages and disadvantages (pros/cons) of each
alternative, and then discussing the short and long term
implications of choosing each

11
OPTION II:
A Strategy Orientation
1. The history, development, and growth of the company over
time
2. The identification of the company's internal strengths and
weaknesses
3. The nature of the external environment surrounding the
company
4. A SWOT analysis
5. The kind of corporate-level strategy pursued by the company
6. The nature of the company's business-level strategy
7. The company's structure and control systems and how they
12
match its strategy
8. Recommendations
Analyze the company's history,
development, and growth

A convenient way to investigate how a company's past


strategy and
structure affect it in the present is to chart the critical
incidents
in its history - that is, the events that were the most unusual
or the
most essential for its development into the company it is
13 today
Identify the company's internal strengths
and weaknesses

Once the historical profile is completed, you can


begin the SWOT analysis

14
Analyze the external environment
Which factors in the micro environment will appear
salient depends on the specific company being
analyzed
PEST
BCG Matrix

15
Evaluate the SWOT analysis

need to balance strengths and weaknesses against


opportunities and threats. Is the company in an
overall strong competitive position

16
Analyze corporate-level
strategy
To analyze a company's corporate-level strategy,
you first need to define the company's mission and
goals and objectives

17
Analyze business-level strategy

Identifying the functional strategies that a company


pursues to build competitive advantage through
superior efficiency, quality, innovation, and customer
responsiveness and to achieve its business-level
strategy is very important

18
Analyze structure and control systems
The aim of this analysis is to identify what structure
and control systems the company is using to
implement its strategy and to evaluate whether that
structure is the appropriate one for the company

19
Make recommendations

Recommendations are directed at solving whatever


strategic problem the company is facing and at
increasing its future profitability.
Your recommendations should be in line with your
analysis; that is, they should follow logically from the
previous discussion

20

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