Penn State University Libraries - Case Studies

The case study is a teaching method used in which a real or fictitious situation is presented with the intended purpose of stimulating discussion and suggestions for possible outcomes to identified problems. Perhaps the most widely known and heavily used case studies in business education are those produced by Harvard Business School Publishing. Finding case studies can, however, be difficult.

Harvard Business School (HBS) distributes case studies and notes through Harvard Business School Publishing (HBSP). You can find case studies in several ways:

• Use the HBSP website (http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/educators) and search the online catalog. Here users can search the entire catalog of over 7,500 items from HBS, as well as case studies from several other universities. Users can search by keyword, company name, or by browsing topics. There is a small fee for each case study.

  • Use the printable catalogs on the HBSP website. These catalogs are organized by discipline and are updated monthly.

  • Textbook Case Maps match cases to the leading business textbooks on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Each map suggests several cases for each chapter. Case maps are found on the HBSP website.

  • The Teaching Materials Newsletter is published 3 times a year and lists new cases in each discipline. You can sign up for or download an electronic copy of the newsletter on the HBSP website.

Each issue of the Harvard Business Review includes a Case Discussion. These are short, fictitious situations that present a decision point and then follow with four to six commentaries from leading industry experts.

In addition to the methods above, there are 3 ways of finding case discussions:

• Go to the HBSP website (http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/educators) and enter HBR Case Discussion into the keyword search.

• Browse issues of the Harvard Business Review to find an appropriate case. The Schreyer Business Library has the complete holdings of the Harvard Business Review back to 1922.

• Use indexing and abstracting services, such as ProQuest. Enter search terms to better identify specific case studies.

Researchers can order case studies from several other academic institutions and organizations (prices vary). Some examples:

• CaseNet / Southwestern College Publishing
  Distributes cases for a small fee from a number of universities

• Stanford Business School, Cases

• European Case Clearing House

• INSEAD / European Institute of Business Administration

• Melbourne Case Study Services

• University of Western Ontario, Richard Ivey School of Business

• World Bank Institute Case Study Collection

North American Case Research Association

Case Research Journal
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