Page 27 - General Cases 1

- Focus (financial analysis, leadership, sales analysis,

marketing strategy etc.)

- Outcomes (what is to be achieved by using the case -

academic; social; etc.?)

These areas will impact and colour the questions set for the

case study and its use for example; who is the target

audience and at what level of the educational process are
they? In the traditional case study questions set for

undergraduate will be substantially different from those used

with post-experience. Short cases however, may help
ameliorate this question differential?

In 1956 George A. Miller formulated the chunk concept (2). A

concept that today has some, if limited, appeal for
explaining of the advantages of short case studies.

Chunking refers to the strategy of breaking down

information into bite-sized pieces so the brain can more
easily digest new information. If university courses are being

fore-shortened then there may be a case for ‘chunking’

business cases into more manageable bite sizes i.e. short
cases.

This would require that the course module was divided into

smaller related cases and these become the basis for the
lessons. It could be predicated that these short cases could

be used as building blocks of varying complexity to underpin

the final traditional examination style case study.