Page 17 - CL Case Structure

Short Cases

The focus case in this chapter/book is a short case study

On the football club ‘Borussia Dortmund: Bomb Plot’ whose

team bus was bombed on its way to a match.

It emerged that the culprit had carried out the bombing to

make a financial killing! This piqued interest and provided

an noteworthy scenario to study which lent itself to

development into a short case study.

Short cases range from half a page (a few paragraphs) to

one + pages which are becoming more prevalent. This may

be because of the increasing use of the case method on

undergraduate courses. Or because of the need to explore

specific pieces of theory rather than a range of inter-

connected theories embedded in a single case study.

The Borussia Dortmund case study is effectively –

depending on the font size - four pages long.

• Case studies vary both in length and detail,

and can be used in a number of ways,

depending on the case itself and on the

instructor’s goals.