(Allow 15 minutes)
Case studies are widely used in business and management. You will learn more about them in the following activity.
Read the following sentences which describe what a case study is. Which of them are true and which are false? Write True or False in the box next to each sentence.
| True or False | |
|---|---|
| Case studies are used in business and management to help you learn and think about a particular aspect of business and management. | |
| A case study can be presented in a range of different formats including written text, video or audio. Case studies can include interviews, TV programmes, academic papers and newspaper articles. | |
| A case study is a representation of a real-life or lifelike situation facing a business or business sector. | |
| A case study may describe a simple situation or a highly complex one. | |
| A case study can be based on fact or it can be fictional, i.e. completely invented. |
All the comments above are true. As mentioned in the first statement, all case studies are meant to teach you something about a business, and can be of a wide range of examples.
The information on analysing a case study given in this box is also included in Book 1: Handbook for Business Communication. Analysing a case study means reading or listening to the information available and using key concepts or a framework from a business context to examine the situation that is being described in detail. This is called ‘framing the case’. It means choosing the relevant set of concepts with which to approach the case and then analysing it. The framework you choose will depend on the purpose of the analysis, i.e. what you want to achieve as a result of it. For example, you may be analysing a business at a particular time, such as at start-up, or you may be analysing a change in the marketplace, such as the launch of a new product which would disrupt the relevant market and require competitors to rethink their strategy. In an academic study context a case study is used to draw out principles which can then be applied to other business situations. The purpose is to learn from the case study.