For years, if not decades, B-schools have been teaching their students strategy based on cases framed by their international counterparts. Cases specific to the Indian situation have been few and far between. It is to level out this imbalance that Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA) hosted an event called LIBA Certatus 2017, a business case study symposium.
The institute invited academicians, research scholars, case writers and industry professionals to send in their cases relating to specific management domains. They received around 29 entries, according to Fr P Christie, director of the management studies institute.
In his welcome address at LIBA’s auditorium, Fr Christie said he would like to make the case study symposium an annual affair. “The whole idea behind the conference is to inspire people to come up with contextual case studies that are relevant in Indian situations, and can be used in classrooms.”
Case repository
With the aim of creating a repository of business cases, the institute has bundled all the entries into a book titled LIBA Cases 2017 , but only after putting the cases through a rigorous whetting procedure. “In tune with our institute’s motto, we looked at the entries through the lens of ethics and excellence. We sent some of them back, because cases should be well written and edited. We also used plagiarism software to ensure that there was proper referencing and no plagiarised material. In keeping with the school’s reputation, we want to publish original cases,” the director added.
Why does he think it is so important to have case studies specific to the Indian business milieu? Fr Christie says it’s because of the difference in cultures. “Usually, we use Harvard Business School’s cases, or draw from The Case Centre. Many theories in management and other areas are all culturally conditioned. People swear by it. Take Maslow’s theory of motivation, for instance. Somehow, I believe he was born in a place (the US) which is highly individualistic and, therefore, self-actualisation is possible. But in India, more importance is given to society.
“So, unless we create our own cases, relevant to our own culture, I don’t think we will be able to do justice to the students.”
Better case writing
And to do this, people need to be trained to write case studies well. Which is why, in the event’s schedule, there were two important sessions — one, by Prof MR Dixit, a former IIM-A faculty member, who spoke on ‘Advanced tips towards better case writing’; and the second by LIBA’s adjunct faculty, VA George, who dealt with ‘Learning to teach cases’.
“We don’t have the expertise to write cases well, write succinctly. But we need to give people the chance to hone those skills and write better case studies, so that, somewhere down the line, we too start producing good cases,” the director said.