general shoe company case study

Exploring the Relevance and Efficacy of the Case Method 100 Years Later

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I t’s 1921. At the General Shoe Company, employees in the company’s manufacturing plant are routinely stopping work up to 45 minutes before quitting time. It’s not for lack of business—the company has more orders than it can fill. So what, then, is the issue?

After summarizing this situation, General Shoe Company —the first published business case, one page in length—concludes with two questions for the reader:

What factors should be developed in the investigation on the part of management?

What are the general policies in accordance with which these conditions should be remedied?[1]

In other words, what’s going on here, and what should managers do to fix it?

“It’s kind of like a detective story. Something has gone deeply wrong in this factory, and your job as chief executive is to figure out whodunnit—but even before that, figure out what you’re going to ask and of whom.” Jan Rivkin, Harvard Business School professor

Jan Rivkin: It's kind of like a detective story. Something has gone deeply wrong in this factory. And your job as chief executive is to figure out eventually whodunnit—but even before that, to figure out what you're going to ask of whom.

Narrator: In the plant of the General Shoe Company, it has come to the attention of the chief executive that many of the piece workers throughout the plant are in the habit of discontinuing their work three quarters of an hour before closing time. The condition has become acute at the present time because the company has more orders than it can fill.

Rivkin: The first Harvard Business School case study was the General Shoe Company , published in 1921. It was the end of the Progressive era, so a time of deep unrest when the country was struggling with industrialization, urbanization, government corruption, and immigration. And large industrial concerns, particularly in, for instance, railroads or steel, had taken over entire industries. And the idea of management as a profession was very new.

The school was a nascent enterprise. It was 13 years old. No one really knew how to teach business, we didn't know what we would teach or how we'd do it. Well, there were some very specialized courses. You could major in the lumber industry. You could take a course in railroad accounting.

In 1912, the dean of the school, Edwin Gay, took aside Melvin Copeland, who was an early hero of the school, and told him that for one section of a course called commercial organization—what became marketing—he should teach it by discussion and not by lecture. The real turning point was when Wallace Donham was appointed dean in 1919. He believed in his heart this thing called the case method was the way to go for the school. And he did a couple things. He got Melvin Copeland to stop writing a book on marketing and instead collect a set of problems in marketing. And very quickly, Copeland gathered a whole book of often one paragraph long problems from which he'd teach. The second thing is the dean deployed the Bureau of Business Research to hire men to write cases. And the first one was General Shoe by the field agent Clinton Biddle.

So, we don't know for sure why the shoe industry was chosen. But I have a couple theories. First, it's worth remembering that Boston and Massachusetts were kind of the Silicon Valley of shoe making in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. And HBS was really very much a local enterprise at that time. The first graduating class had individuals, three quarters of whom were from Massachusetts. The second possible reason is that HBS faculty were surprisingly familiar with the shoe industry at the time. It turns out that the very first research study done by Harvard Business School under the Bureau of Business Research was an investigation to understand the structure of the shoe retailing industry. I think HBS faculty and students would have felt quite at home with the General Shoe Company.

Narrator: There is general unrest among working men because of the cost of living, which has increased 95 percent since 1914. Wages have not been correspondingly increased. The rule of the shop is that all piece workers are to remain at work until 10 minutes before quitting time. A whistle is blown at this time, and the employees are allowed to leave their work to wash up. The foremen report difficulty in enforcing this rule. It is observed by about 30 percent of the employees who did not wash up before going out. Others take 45 minutes or less from their working time.

Rivkin: It's really deeply wonderfully ambiguous why the workers are leaving their positions early. It could be, as the workers say, because otherwise they'd wind up getting stuck in the washrooms and can't leave on time. It could be that they're upset that their wages are not keeping up with inflation, and this is their protest. It could be that the foremen aren't conveying the message to the workers to stay on the job. It could be that the piece workers are working so hard that they're exhausted before the shift ends. It could be the line is not balanced so that some stations are out of raw material before the workday ends, so they might as well take off. It's a detective story.

What should you, the chief executive, do? The students would come up with a long list of things they might do. But gradually they'd realize, or I would ask them, do you actually have the information you need in order to make a decision on what to do? Acting on the wrong root cause would cause you problems. For me, the important thing in this case is that you can tackle an ambiguous situation and reverse engineer from the options available to you what questions you need to ask as a general manager to learn enough to be able to take reasonable action.

We are here now nearly a century after the General Shoe Company case was first published. And you have to ask, is the case method still relevant? There are new technologies, new methods—but I think the fundamentals of the case method are still very sound. The experiences that engage students, the experiences that force them to think critically, to sort out important from unimportant facts, to think for themselves, consider alternatives, listen to others, explain their views to others, make a decision—those experiences will continue to deliver powerful learning.

What I love about General Shoe is it allows students to practice a core skill of general managers. How do you go into an ambiguous situation and get to the bottom of it? That skill, the skill of figuring out a course of inquiry, to choose a course of action, that skill is as relevant today as it was in 1921.

Source: “Celebrating General Shoe Company, the Inaugural HBS Case,” Harvard Business School, April 12, 2019, https://www.hbs.edu/about/video.aspx?v=1_0486ljh3 .

Cases have changed considerably since General Shoe Company was published. Today, most are much longer than one page. Most include a variety of data and exhibits that are derived from extensive field and secondary research. Many have teaching notes and other supplementary materials such as spreadsheets and data sets. Some contain audio, video, or even virtual reality components.

THE CENTENNIAL OF THE BUSINESS CASE: A 5-PART SERIES

Part 1: Exploring the Relevance and Efficacy of the Case Method 100 Years Later

Part 2: The Heart of the Case Method

Part 3: The Art of the Case Method

Part 4: Tales from the Trenches

Part 5: The Future of the Case Method

THE SERIES TRANSLATED

Access free PDFs of this five-part article series, translated into each of the following languages:

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Yet, as we approach the centennial of General Shoe Company , there are also important commonalities between cases from 1921 and 2021. Then as now, most cases describe an actual decision-making situation that managers have faced. Then as now, most cases place the reader in the proverbial shoes of these managers and ask them to use the information provided in the case to decide what they and their company should do. And then, as now, cases do not provide “the answer” to the challenge at hand—they rely on ensuing discussion and knowledge-sharing among students for the learning to unfold.

Where It All Began

The authors of the earliest business cases drew inspiration from the use of edited cases of court decisions to teach law students. Yet, these authors also argued that business education required materials and teaching methods different from those used in law schools. They believed that, unlike law, business had no “practices and precedents”[2] upon which students could always rely. Like case authors today, they thus wanted to develop materials that would help students learn to define and solve ill-defined managerial problems under time constraints, uncertainty, and ever-changing conditions.

Business Cases in 2021

Today, about 15 million business cases are sold annually to students. Over 50 business schools worldwide now have case collections. Thousands of new cases are written and released every year. These data suggest that even as cases have and will continue to change, the case method has enduring appeal and influence.

Where We Go from Here

In this centennial series, we will highlight how the case method can transform both students and faculty. To do so, we will examine what case-method teaching entails and hear directly from numerous faculty who will share their own personal stories and perspectives of teaching cases. In addition, we will consider potential future directions for cases and the implications of this evolution for the case method.

Finally, we want you to tell us about your experiences with cases . What about case teaching or writing has been rewarding? What’s been difficult? What have your favorite cases been and why? We want to incorporate your insights into our future coverage of cases. We look forward to hearing from you.

[1] Clinton Biddle, General Shoe Company. Boston: Harvard Business School, 1921.

[2] Wallace B. Donham, “Business Teaching by the Case System,” The American Economic Review 12 (March 1922): 53–65.

Explore all 5 parts of our series celebrating 100 years of the business case.

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100 years of shoes - what makes a great case?

By  Emma Simmons , September 2021

In 1921, thirteen years after its foundation, Harvard Business School (HBS) published the first business teaching case – The General Shoe Company . That pioneering, one-page, document was to fundamentally change how business and management were taught. The centenary gives us an opportunity to reflect on what makes a great teaching case, on what has changed and evolved, and what the future might hold. Cases were already in use at Harvard medical and law schools. The approach was tried at HBS as early deans and faculty realised the importance of teaching with business ‘problems’ and saw the potential of using discussion pedagogy to work through them. They wanted to equip HBS students to return to their organisations armed with not only a grasp of business theory but also the practical approaches to apply it.

We cannot know for sure why the topic of the first published case was chosen. In an HBS video about The General Shoe Company , Jan Rivkin informs us that by the 1920s, Massachusetts and Boston itself had become centres of a burgeoning shoe industry, and understanding its structure was the focus of one of the school’s first pieces of faculty research. School participants came from many sectors, so we can imagine that other industries faced similar problems to the core dilemma of that first case: workers not staying active on their tasks to the end of their shifts, although there were more orders to fulfil.

Remarkably, the shoe/footwear industry has featured regularly in cases across the 100 years, right up to the present day. So, we consider here what makes a great case with the help of faculty from across the globe who have published cases featuring the sector. A search of The Case Centre catalogue using key words ‘ shoes ’ and ‘ footwear ’ reveals hundreds of available items, including award winning cases. Usage data reveals that it is not only the most recent of these cases that are still selected for class, underlining the fact highlighted by many we spoke to that topicality can be, but is not necessarily, the marker of a great case. Brands such as Adidas , Bata and Nike have made many repeat appearances over the years, such cases centring their business dilemmas across diverse management areas from strategy and marketing, to accounting, and production and operations management - and beyond. Case locations have cut across multiple geographies both global and local, and many allow discussion of ever more topical business issues such as entrepreneurship, ethics and sustainability. 

Story and engagement

One of the first strengths of a great case is that it - usually quickly - captures the attention of the audience and then proceeds to engage participants. This is partly achieved through skilful case writing; specialists exist to help, and there are also workshops to help faculty develop their own skills. Fundamentally, the case story must allow participants to rapidly and easily connect with it and often also identify with its key protagonists.

At ESCA School of Management, Imane El Ghazali and Zoulikha Maaroufi authored the 2020 EFMD Competition-winning The Benson Shoes Case in Morocco . This case also featured in the inaugural edition of Case Focus - The Journal of Business & Management Teaching Cases, Middle East and Africa Edition. When looking for a case to use in their classes, Imane El Ghazali and Zoulikha Maaroufi insist “on both the quality of the writing and the story effect. The art of telling a story is so important even in technical cases such as finance or accounting.” They observe that: “Class engagement depends first on both how the case is written, and how the captivating story is presented to students, involving the learners in the decision making, and challenging and intriguing them.”

At Stanford Graduate School of Business, Jennifer L Aaker authored (with Sara Gaviser Leslie) the 2010 Award winning Zappos: Happiness in a Box , and (with Sara Gaviser Leslie, Ravdeep Chawla) Nike We: Design Meets Social Good . Her primary research includes studying the power of storytelling and how storytelling helps build brands and organisations. In Harnessing the Power of Stories  we hear how stories are more memorable than facts alone, and that “The most powerful stories take the audience where you want them to go.” Because of the element of storytelling in a case, these reflections help us understand how a strong case story can achieve this pedagogical mission. Jennifer L Aaker identifies four target characteristics of an effective story that an author needs to address:

• Why are you telling this story?
• How does it grab attention - why would the audience want to listen?
• How does it engage - why would your audience care?
• How does it enable action - why would the audience want to share the story?

Those same questions resonate for authors developing a mesmerising case.

Learning journey

At the London College of Fashion, Natascha Radclyffe-Thomas and Ana Roncha authored the 2017, Case Centre Award winning, TOMS Shoes: The Buy-one-give-one Social Enterprise Business Model .  “A nice, interesting and well written story is important to a great case, but on its own it’s not enough for it to work in the classroom”, Ana Roncha points out. “The crucial question is whether there is an underlying issue, a principle or problem embedded in that story; is there a trigger to identify and enough data so that the instructor can direct students and their critical thinking towards what you want them to explore - concepts, theory, outcomes etc? It’s about the case having the potential to create a learning experience and journey.”

Others also highlight how the best cases have their classroom purpose at the forefront of their construction. When Derek Abell published his Technical Note (1996 updated in 2003) on what makes a good case , his first of ten criteria was to make sure “it’s a case and not just a story.” He comments today that his many years of case teaching and extensive supervision of case writing have shown him that a strong case is necessarily underpinned by “really clear and tightly conceived teaching objectives. In a good case the author has thought about actually teaching it before sitting down to write and that often should include writing the teaching note in parallel.” He adds: “An effective case is a kind of platform or springboard that the instructor can use to jump off to go in many different directions; in good cases the real problem may not be immediately obvious.” According to Derek Abell: “The case teaching process must also be able to accommodate the experience and input to the discussion of students so as to take them on a journey and then bring them back to the learning points they will take away after class.”

As newer generation case authors and teachers, working in an emerging business education context, Imane El Ghazali and Zoulikha Maaroufi also have the classroom process foremost in mind when they evaluate how successful a case might be. Their personal checklist comprises twelve characteristics: 

• Topic and issues are innovative and original .
• Deals with real-world life and a real situation .
• Challenges learners and pushes them to the analysis.
• Allows learners to recognise when their own reflections are not sufficient and pushes them to deepen the analysis and find more ways to make more optimal recommendations for the situation.
• Facilitates the discussion of concepts and makes them concrete.
• Is easy and enjoyable, pleasant to read .
• Provides both density and clarity of information and data it includes.
• Allows rich class discussion .
• Enables the learning objectives to be achieved .
• Deals with a diversity of specific markets e.g. African, Mediterranean, Arab contexts, MENA region etc. - of great interest nowadays.
• Is produced in close partnership with the company , having their signed release to collaborate in the case writing and publication.
• Has a well structured teaching note which includes all possible suggestions of resolution and a wide range of tracks of analysis.

Imane El Ghazali and Zoulikha Maaroufi

Accessible, flexible: skill

Of course, the success of a class depends not just on the case and its potential, but also on the instructor, and the audience of participants - whether local, national or multinational, undergraduate, masters, or executives. A case needs to be accessible to whoever is in the class. According to Natascha Radclyffe-Thomas, “A good case helps the class get into what could be an overwhelming topic. Even an apparently simple case narrative needs to have complexity underscoring it. Perhaps it illustrates how smaller acts or decisions can have a growing, even a massive, impact. Such cases give participants alternatives to think about; to wonder what they would do in the situation. And, most importantly, the problems in the best cases leave the class with the students, who may want to talk about them afterwards with their friends, family or colleagues.”

Successful cases are often flexible, enabling the core problem or dilemma to be widely accessible and applicable. In 1978, Malcolm McDonald authored Southern Shoe Company . He underlines the need for the instructor to be audience aware. “Putting the case in context has always been crucial,” he says. “The requirements of a case to teach undergraduates with no commercial experience are different from those to teach postgraduates with lots of experience. Not only the case needs to be flexible - it’s also down to the instructor, who needs to adapt, being totally familiar with both the facts of the case, the composition of the class, and the objectives of the particular course.” At ICFAI Business School (IBS), Hyderabad, Jitesh Nair, author (with Bitra Vasudev) of the 2021 case Bata’s Direct Marketing Initiatives , agrees: “Irrespective of whether a case is average or extremely well written, or whether a student is only moderately prepared, success boils down to how the faculty uses it to actively engage the students in the discussion, focussing on the situation to be addressed and the decisions that must be made.”

At INSEAD, Luk Van Wassenhove recently published the case series EMMA Safety Footwear (A): Designing a Circular Shoe  (with Andre Calmon, Anne-Marie Carrick, Anne Nai-Tien Huang), and (B): Implementing the Circular Business   (with Anne Nai-Tien Huang). “A good case is flexible,” he says, “people from different management disciplines should be able to use it, and we don’t do that enough right now. A strong case can often be taught on a very technical and narrow level, but also for a wider strategic or decision making purpose.” But he urges instructors to view a case as more than just a vehicle to teach an audience. “A great case is not just a pedagogical instrument - it also provides the author or the teacher with the opportunity to learn and think more deeply about a problem.” He adds, “The very act of writing a case is an opportunity to learn because it forces you to explore things interesting businesses are doing, and then to translate your own learning into something that can be communicated to others.”

One of HBS’s most celebrated proponents of the case method, C Roland Christensen, authored (with David C Rikert) a 1984 Nike case series (updated in 1990). In the introduction to the 1987 edition of his book Teaching and the Case Method (with Abby J Hansen; 1994 third edition also with Louis B Barnes) he, too, sees the wider, more holistic context of a powerful case between research, pedagogy and learning: “A teacher who views the classroom as a laboratory gains both knowledge and insight. Students in their naiveté pose wonderful research questions. Opportunities for experimentation abound.” 

Many we spoke to highlighted the crucial difference a teaching note can make to the successful use of a case. For Jitesh Nair, a good teaching note represents a learning opportunity for the instructor, when using someone else’s case: “From the case writer’s perspective, the case should be able to engage and captivate the students, while the teaching note should engage and captivate the faculty taking the case to the classroom.”  Teaching notes also often contain data or indicate how to access it. For Derek Abell this is important: “A good case has the data required to tackle the problem - roughly what the manager had; in the real world you have some and you don’t have some. Make it realistic!” In these days of fast Internet access to almost any data, he cautions: “A good case is not about what’s online, it’s about how you look at it.”

Case evolution

So has a great case changed appreciably over the last hundred years? Obviously, the vast majority are now distributed - and often used - electronically. Historically, most highly regarded cases could easily run to 30, densely typed, pages - plus attachments. It is something of an irony that the first case was just one page in length because the trend towards (much) shorter cases is evident today. Malcolm MacDonald highlights the potency of a well constructed shorter document. “A so-called ‘mini case’ is rarely longer than a single page,” he says. “I frequently use such cases on executive courses where there is a lot of learning ground to cover and they can be brilliant at getting across points related to ‘theory’ and to anchor it in a practical context.” Faculty we spoke to felt that cases have had to get shorter in recent years because participants are no longer willing to read as much. This puts the onus firmly on the author to reduce case length while maintaining its functionality. Anecdotally, students’ attention spans are also shorter and pre-class preparation time competes with all other electronic connections to the world outside. Some felt that this was especially problematic for executives, whose companies can nowadays expect them to carry on working and being in contact while away on a programme, which in the past might have been primarily viewed as time away from the office to reflect.

Expectations have also changed with some students anticipating class to be entertaining. Engaging audio visual elements are frequently included for popular cases and these undoubtedly enliven the session, whether videos of companies and interviews with protagonists, direct links to information or data via the Internet looked at in class, real time polling, or simulations. Instructors recognise it is what you can do with a case in class, rather than just the case itself that determines how effective it will be.

The pandemic of 2020/21 and the switch to online teaching has had an unexpected and profound impact on what a case needs to comprise in order to succeed, whether in synchronous, asynchronous or hybrid teaching mode. The pace of evolution has accelerated. “Teaching online has constituted a massive shift and put pressure both on teachers and on case content,” observes Ana Roncha. “Where we might previously have focused on searching out more interesting brands to teach with, Covid-19 has forced everyone to rethink their teaching and writing practice. More than ever, the teaching process needs to be included in the case objectives, alongside the learning objectives. Online, especially in hybrid teaching, you can rarely just throw in a role play or follow a spontaneous diversion in the discussion, so having detailed suggestions on how to teach the case remotely, and planning the online session have become really important and have laid bare which cases hold enough content to create an online learning journey, and which do not.”

For Luk Van Wassenhove, things that might previously have been done informally in a case class have now become necessary elements to plan in. “The really interesting thing with a great case class is when something unexpected comes up,” he says. “Facilitating this online is much more difficult, so the case and its attachments need to adapt to be chunked and maintain engagement throughout an online session.” The impact of these new necessities may well be positive for cases. Topics and companies will also be subject to change as the pandemic has plunged so many industries and sectors into transition - not least the footwear industry - and the most compelling cases will reflect these shifts and changes in society such as incorporating greater diversity, more local businesses and SMEs, and by including more pressing topics that students are passionate about such as sustainability.

After one hundred years, “the fundamentals of the case method are still very sound,” believes Jan Rivkin. In the fifth of a series of articles by the HBP (Harvard Business Publishing) Editors to mark the centenary, he adds: “The experiences that engage students, the experiences that force them to think critically, to sort out important from unimportant facts, to think for themselves, listen to others, explain their views to others, make a decision - those experiences will continue to deliver powerful learning.” The HBP Editors are also optimistic about the future of great cases: “We argue that the most memorable cases help students feel more connected to the case protagonists or others who are affected by the protagonists’ actions. When students feel the prospect of connection, they are more willing to use their imaginations, to bridge the gap between their own circumstances and those presented in the case, and to step into another’s shoes.”

And apropos of shoes; do we know why footwear has been one of the few industries to feature as a prime case subject across one hundred years? “First and foremost, shoes are familiar,” observes Natascha Radclyffe-Thomas. “They present no barrier as a topic to engagement, no matter where you are in the world or who you are. But the footwear industry also offers flexible options for cases: you can go as deep as you want, say into production and global supply chains, or you can look at fashion and marketing. I had taken a conscious decision to develop a socially responsible curriculum and to focus on businesses trying to ‘do good’ so my students could engage with alternative and sustainable ways of business thinking, and develop their emotional intelligence. I become interested in researching our case subject TOMS, with its ‘buy one - give one’ message, through a presentation about branding. When research and developing a case can go hand in hand, this maximises the use of academic resources and increases the chances of the case being believed in, relatable, and learning activated.” She adds: “A good case can ripple out into other things; if you use cases as a teaching philosophy, a multi-layered case can have influence far beyond class.” As Jennifer L Aaker says: “… go out, share stories and move people to action.”

This article was published in Connect , Issue 53, September 2021.

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The problem with Harvard Business School case studies

Even if you didn’t go to business school, you’ve probably heard of Harvard case studies and the Harvard case method, the pedagogical system of choice at one of the world’s most elite business schools.

In slim booklets, the cases, of which there are tens of thousands, lay out the strategic questions facing a major corporation, like Amazon, GE, or Pepsi. The scenarios they describe are real, all ripped from the business pages.

The case method, as a style of learning, asks students to imagine themselves in the role of the “protagonist” (typically the CEO) leading the firm profiled in the case. They’re required to come to class prepared to make a solid argument for one course of direction, and then convince their peers of it, with rhetorical flair. Rather than lecture, the professor facilitates a class-wide debate, cold calling on students to answer tough questions.

Before graduating, Harvard Business School (HBS) students complete 500 of these “decision-forcing” exercises, which are thought to be superior tools for training future corporate leaders, compared with discussing skills and theory in the abstract. Arguably, because the method has been so widely adopted by other schools, which tend to combine it with traditional lecture formats (at Harvard, it’s used almost exclusively), it’s come to be synonymous with business education itself.

But the authors of a recent paper argue that Wallace Donham, the man credited with establishing the case method as a force at HBS in the 1920s, had evolving views of business education that have never been surfaced, and that contradict the sense that management lessons should be viewed through the narrow lens of the case study.

In Donham’s writing and correspondence, Todd Bridgman, a management professor at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and lead author of “Restating The Case: How Revisiting the Development of the Case Method Can Help Us Think Differently About the Future of the Business School,” finds evidence that years after installing the case method, Donham sincerely believed it was too indifferent to larger societal ills, too insensitive to the labor market, and thus to economic prosperity and equality among workers.

During the Great Depression, “broad questions were suddenly being raised about the very future of capitalism,” says Bridgman. In the upheaval, he says, Donham saw the limits of the approach he had championed.

Strangely, Donham’s apparent change of heart is not recognized in conventional histories of HBS and its iconic case method, according to Bridgman and his co-authors, management professors Stephen Cummings, a fellow professor at Victoria University, and Colm McLaughlin of the University College Dublin. Bridgman says this surprised the group. He and his colleagues, whose work was published in the Academy of Management, propose that the case study, now central to the HBS brand and its revenue , has been given a convenient origin story that created a new, accepted truth.

Referencing the French philosopher Michel Foucault, they suggest that in such cases, the “truth” about a historical event is actually driven by present-day concerns, but that it becomes, as Foucault wrote, “the sort of error that cannot be refuted because it [has been] hardened into an unalterable form in the long baking process of history.”

The business school dean and his philosopher friend

Bridgman and his colleagues’ intriguing counter-history of HBS begins when Donham arrives in 1919, becoming its second dean. The school was only 11 years old then, but it was already using what it called “problem solving” as a method for learning—to a degree. As the authors report, the school’s founding dean, Edwin Gay, had adapted the case study method pioneered at Harvard’s law school, of which Donham was an alumnus.

Under Gay, however, the school had struggled to find problems as fodder for course lessons. Donham would change that by expanding what was then the research department of the school and tasking it with producing case textbooks. Harvard would build a library of cases that reflected the businesses of the times, and in engaging with their predicaments, he hoped, scientific theories of management would emerge.

As the case method ramped up at Harvard, so too did the US economy and its corporate powers—until 1929. Following the stock market crash of that year, amid mass unemployment, falling prices, and economic instability, public opinion of corporations and their profit-seeking motives naturally soured. And Donham began revisiting his mission at Harvard.

By this time, he had become friendly with the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, a British transplant who had left Cambridge University for Harvard, where he wrote on metaphysics.

Whitehead is now best known as the originator of “process philosophy,” which, put most simply, posits that reality is comprised of a series of interconnected events, or becomings, rather than fixed “matter.” Among other issues, this worldview is concerned with “the relationship between mind and world, and the realization of values in action,” according to the  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Whiteheld held strong convictions about what education should be. Specifically, he “rejected any distinction between abstract and practical knowledge,” Bridgman and his fellow researchers note. His support of hands-on training thus bolstered Donham’s approach to teaching business at a time when the academic community was questioning whether the school even belonged on its campus.

However, the great thinker also worried about the era’s preoccupation with capital and material goods. In the book  Science and the Modern World (MacMillan, 1925), Whitehead advocates for “concrete appreciation of the individual facts in their full interplay of emergent values,” in any discussion of how societies should be organized.

The modern world had developed “a creed of competitive business morality,” he wrote. Values, he observed, were being “politely bowed to, and then handed over to the clergy to be kept for Sundays.’”

Whitehead wanted Harvard, and its business students, to develop an alternative perspective, studying societal change as part of their educational development. In a lecture he presented in 1931, which later became a book, he cautioned against the “the fallacy of thinking of the business world in abstraction from the rest of the community.”

He’s recognized for giving Donham and the case method some intellectual gravitas. But, Bridgman writes, “curiously absent [in historical accounts] are other, relevant aspects of both his thinking and his relationship with Donham.”

In snippets of Donham’s writing, we see how his opinions overlapped with Whitehead, with whom he met for long Saturday afternoon discussions. Consider Donham’s call to action in Business Looks At The Unforeseen (Whittlesey House/McGraw-Hill), published in 1932:

“Our present situation both here and in all the great industrial nations of the world is a major breakdown of capitalism. Can this be overcome? I believe so, but not without leadership which thinks in terms of broad social problems instead of in terms of particular companies.”

A year later, in an article titled “The Failure of Business Leadership and the Responsibilities of the Universities,” published in Harvard Business Review, Donham wrote, “We need in business and politics administrators who are able not only to handle their specialized problems well, but also to see things in wide relations and do their part in maintaining society’s stability and equilibrium.”

Donham had once asked to publish one of Whitehead’s essays on schooling business leaders, in a program being printed to celebrate the opening of a new building on campus. (Whitehead instead offered his piece to The Atlantic Monthly magazine.) The dean also suggested that a third year be added to Harvard’s graduate program, a doctoral level year focused on the relationship between business and civilization. But the tragedy of the Great Depression, while demonstrating the need for just this type of reflection, also meant Donham couldn’t secure financing for that third year.

After the war, American business picked up again with renewed strength, and the conversation changed. Whatever misgivings Donham had were put aside.

The union leader stays

It’s possible that Donham’s new tune in the 1930s was mostly a public relations move, Bridgman and his research partners acknowledge. “It’s hard to unpack the motives of someone,” he tells Quartz. “People might write about the same things we’ve written about and come to different conclusions.”

But the research points to other aspects of Donham’s life that would support their thesis. For instance, in 1921, Donham had hired the union leader Robert Fechner, and was forced to defend that decision in the face of significant anti-labor pressure.

Fechner was head of the International Association of American Machinists, a union affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, and his appointment was considered troubling to local industrialists, who let their disapproval be known to the school.

Donham, however, would not back down. He felt that for students to build a holistic understanding of business, they needed to hear labor’s view.

In a letter regarding an aggrieved factory owner who worried about impressionable young men studying with an anti-capitalist, Donham was emphatic: “We are not ex cathedra laying down the law about business and the way it must be done … We are not endeavoring to prevent them from thinking and to keep them from having a basis on which to think for themselves…We are trying to give them the basis for sane thought and independent thought and we are stimulating this thought as much as possible.”

Oddly, only one history of the case method’s development even mentions Fechner, Bridgman and his research partners find. This bit of lost history “challenges the story of a single-minded and enduring cultivation of a managerial worldview,” they write.

Today, they add, the role of labor has been largely “air-brushed” out of business school class materials, while industrial relations departments have been rebranded as “human resource management” departments, or folded into departments of organization studies.

An educational gadget, or something worse?

One of Donham’s contemporaries, a Harvard business school professor who had lost faith in the case study method as a potential tool for deep critical thinking, eventually called the case study an “educational gadget,” the researchers note. That may be too benign a description for today’s critics.

In recent years, the case method has been knocked for several serious moral failures, accused by various critics of “constructing mythical, heroic portrayals of leadership” and “privileging senior management views and managerialism.” It’s been said to exclude the voices of women, the poor, and labor, and to contain “a flawed logic of translatability from one context to others.”

In The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite (Harper Business, 2017), business writer Duff McDonald  gives the case study method its due as the school’s “signature contribution” to management curriculum. He also attacks its approach, however, and its overemphasis on how one thinks and undervaluing of  what one thinks.

McDonald compares the case method to a performance, appropriately staged in a 100-seat amphitheater, making Harvard Business School, he writes, “as much a school of dramatic arts as it is one of business.” But his most damning criticism is saved for what he sees as the school’s contribution to financial crises, and to trends like astronomic CEO pay and the heavy emphasis corporations now place on short-term results.

“In McDonald’s view, the school has contributed to pretty much every bad thing that has happened in American business and the economy in the last century,” the New York Times wrote of his book.

Bridgman, a self-confessed critic of the Harvard case method before he started working on this research, also grants the case method was innovative in a few ways, for instance in how it took the spotlight off the instructor or one “right answer.” But it has tainted business education, leading people to believe, wrongly, he says, that business schools exist simply to “reproduce capitalists.”

Harvard responds: “The debate continues today”

In 2021, Harvard Business School will celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the first written case study, which was a single-page document about The General Shoe Company.

Asked if the school had any response to the Academy of Management paper, HBS emailed us a statement, first applauding the researchers’ stated goal to “stimulat[e] debate and innovative thinking about how business schools can address their legitimacy challenges, and, in doing so, have a more positive impact on society.”

The statement, which doesn’t challenge Bridgman’s team’s findings, continues:

In their historical account of Harvard Business School, the authors present a faculty, and especially a Dean, deeply engaged in figuring out the underpinnings of the case method—with the challenging of ideas one would want in an academic institution. They also bring to light the thoughtful debate that shaped the evolution of the case method at HBS. That debate continues today at HBS as we work through the future of the case method … and the creation of complementary methods (the field method of experiential learning, online learning).

The faculty at Harvard, according to the statement, “strive to produce cases that reflect the latest developments in all aspects of leadership and management, leveraging what has happened in the past to help students understand the challenges they may encounter in the future.”

The school, whose illustrious alumni include some of the world’s most powerful men and women in finance and corporate leadership today, like JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg , says it welcomes ongoing debate over how to best prepare its students for the business world.

To Bridgman, however, improvement wouldn’t come from tweaking the cases. “There may well be cases where you’re positioned as a manager at BP, and you have to make a decision about your approach to climate change,” he says. “But to me, that’s different from actually standing back and looking at, broadly, the role of business in society, and questioning capitalism, and asking those more fundamental questions, rather than just looking at those issues in the context of a manager who is really tasked with maximizing profits for their shareholders.”

Part of the problem with decision-forcing exercises alone is that they ask students to work within the existing system, without examining its failures. Bridgman’s paper suggests that business professors could use cases to look at how managers think, rather than to teach students how to think like a manager.

In some cases, pressured by governments or by customers, many businesses are now making an economic case for sustainability and social responsibility. But it has taken a long time to get here, and it may not be enough.

Perhaps if the history of business education had taken a different path, the pressure to do well by the world would have been coming from the corner office all along.

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Case Writing & Industry: Quote

The case method is powerful because it allows students to grapple with problems as if they are the decision maker. In the end, they can actually imagine engaging with real solutions as leaders who can make a difference.

Tsedal Neeley , Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration, in “The HBS Case Method Defined,” 2021. 9

In his 1953 essay “Preparation of Case Materials,” HBS Professor Paul R. Lawrence noted: “A good case is the vehicle by which a chunk of reality is brought into the classroom to be worked over by the class and the instructor.” 10 In response to the needs of the curriculum, ideas for cases emerged from business contacts and personal experiences of HBS faculty and staff. Early manuals for writing cases included procedures for undertaking the preliminary study, interviews with the company, preparation of materials, and writing of the case. In order to collect information relating to a company for use in a case study, researchers, or field agents as they were initially known, were knowledgeable in the art of gaining the trust of and listening to managers as well as front-line employees.

Professor Paul R. Lawrence. HBS Archives Photograph Collection. 

In some instances, industry reached out to HBS to develop case studies around specific issues in their companies, benefitting both HBS and businesses. In 1922, General Electric established a partnership with HBS to produce case studies about the company. A faculty memorandum explained: “Business problems might be gathered from the various departments and subsidiaries of the G.E. Co. for a period of 2 or 3 years. The problems would extend into all the major fields of study covered by the School, such as Marketing, Accounting, Finance, Foreign Trade, Industrial Management, Advertising and Publicity.” 11 The memorandum noted the cases would also be of value to General Electric for employee training and to those working in public utility fields.

Case Writing & Industry: Slider

Harvard Business School faculty meeting, July 18, 1922, page 1.  Office of the Dean. Secretary to the Faculty Minutes, Volume 1921-1924 (AA 1.5).

Download page 1 of the Faculty Meeting Minutes .

Harvard Business School faculty meeting, July 18, 1922, page 2. Office of the Dean. Secretary to the Faculty Minutes, Volume 1921-1924 (AA 1.5).

Download page 2 of the Faculty Meeting Minutes .

GE Distribution Transformer, ca. 1933. Industrial Life Photograph Collection (olvwork354978).

Agent’s Instructions, Chart Outlining Steps, 1924.  Bureau of Business Research Instructions to Agents on Standard Practice (Arch E 75B.55.83.2).

Download the Instructions to Agents .

Education for Business Responsibility, Harvard Business School, 1947, page 14. HBS Archives Vertical File Collection (AC 1947.22).

Download page 14 of Education for Business Responsibility .

Education for Business Responsibility, Harvard Business School, 1947, page 15. HBS Archives Vertical File Collection (AC 1947.22).

Case Writing & Industry: Body 2

The Bureau of Business Research produced cases until 1926, when HBS faculty with their research assistants became solely responsible for the development of the School’s case studies. 12 Through its continual ties with industry, HBS has produced case studies that are both grounded in complex, real-world business situations and serve as effective teaching instruments. The development of case studies has in turn enabled faculty to keep informed of current management trends and strategic issues confronting businesses and provided further research opportunities.

Case Writing & Industry: Footnotes

9 Tsedal Neeley in "The HBS Case Method Defined," 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h80hmEAGBbM. Accessed 2/2/22. 

10 Paul R. Lawrence, “Preparation of Case Materials,” in The Case Method of Teaching Human Relations and Administration , ed. Kenneth Andrews (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 1953, 215-224.

11 Harvard Business School faculty meeting, July 18, 1922. Office of the Dean. Secretary to the Faculty Minutes, Volume 1921-1924 (AA 1.5).

12 Copeland, And Mark an Era , 261.

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New ITU case study maps the Moscow ‘smart city’ journey

Moscow reports experience with Key Performance Indicators for Smart Sustainable Cities

A new ITU case study offers an evaluation of Moscow’s progress in meeting the objectives of its ‘smart city’ strategies and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The case study ,  Implementing ITU-T International Standards to Shape Smart Sustainable Cities: The Case of Moscow , was undertaken using the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Smart Sustainable Cities developed by the  United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) initiativ e .

The ITU case study traces Moscow’s smart city journey from its origins in Moscow’s  Information City  strategy launched in 2011 to its successor the  Smart Moscow 2030  strategy. It highlights the role of Moscow’s Government in coordinating the implementation of a wide array of smart city projects in the city and how these projects have substantially improved the quality of life for city residents. The report assesses Moscow’s smart city performance using U4SSC indicators that measure impact on three dimensions: the economy, environment and society & culture.

Information and communication technology (ICT) is a recognized key contributor to the Moscow economy. Building on its strengths and maintaining ICTs as a strategic lever, Moscow has adopted vibrant policies for ICT development and proliferation. These aspects are clearly reflected in the good performance by Moscow, as presented in the report, within the sub-dimensions of “ICT” and “Productivity”.

The case study also serves as a valuable reference point to other cities in Russia and Commonwealth of Independent State countries – as well as to cities around the world pursuing greater efficiency and sustainability. ITU standardization experts responsible for the refinement of the Key Performance Indicators will also find the case study to be valuable.

RELATED: Dubai reports results from implementing ITU’s Key Performance Indicators for Smart Sustainable Cities

“Home to more than 12 million people, Moscow is the largest urban area on the European continent,” said ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao. “Considering the size of Moscow and its population, this case study offers a unique set of lessons learned for other cities around the world developing a ‘smart city’ strategy. I commend Moscow’s leaders for their efforts to share these experiences and this knowledge with the international community, towards creating a ‘smart’ world for everyone, everywhere.”

“Moscow has made a rapid smart city journey from 2011 and we are keen on keeping up with the pace. No matter whether it is Moscow, Singapore or Barcelona – every city has the same task to make their residents’ lives enjoyable, safe and comfortable,” said Strategy and Innovations Advisor to the Chief Information Officer of Moscow, Andrey Belozerov. “We are happy to contribute to this research as it is important to develop universal metrics to access city performances all around the world.”

The findings of the case study will feed into the work of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T)  Study Group 20 , the expert group leading the development of ITU standards for the Internet of Things and smart cities. These standards assist in optimizing the application of ICTs within smart cities, in addition to supporting efficient data processing and management.

RELATED: New ITU case study shares insight into Singapore’s ‘Smart Nation’ strategy

The findings will also be taken up by the U4SSC initiative, which advocates for public policy to ensure that ICTs, and ICT standards in particular, play a definitive role in the transition to Smart Sustainable Cities. U4SSC also promotes the adoption of international standards in reaching the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the reporting of associated experiences.

The Moscow case study follows prior smart city case studies of Dubai and Singapore. These have made valuable smart cities experiences and knowledge available to other cities around the world. This reporting also solicits feedback that helps cities to refine their smart city strategies.

U4SSC has developed a  ‘Collection methodology for the Key Performance Indicators for Smart Sustainable Cities’  to guide cities in their collection of core data and information necessary to assess  their progress in becoming a Smart Sustainable City. It is supported by 16 United Nations bodies, including ITU, and is open to the participation of all stakeholders interested in driving smart city innovation.

The collaboration encouraged by U4SSC has led more than 50 cities to measure their smart city strategies using the U4SSC’s KPIs for Smart Sustainable Cities, which are based on the ITU international standard,  ITU Y.4903/L.1603 “Key Performance Indicators for Smart Sustainable Cities to assess the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals” .

This ITU News story was originally distributed as an ITU press release. For more ITU press releases, see the  ITU Media Centre . 

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Rainstorms impacts on water, sediment, and trace elements loads in an urbanized catchment within Moscow city: case study of summer 2020 and 2021

• Published: 07 December 2022
• Volume 151 , pages 871–889, ( 2023 )

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• Sergey Chalov   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6937-7020 1 , 2 ,
• Vladimir Platonov 1 ,
• Oxana Erina 1 ,
• Vsevolod Moreido 1 , 3 ,
• Mikhail Samokhin 1 ,
• Dmitriy Sokolov 1 ,
• Maria Tereshina 1 ,
• Yulia Yarinich 1 &
• Nikolay Kasimov 1  

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In 2020 and 2021, the city of Moscow, Russia, has experienced two historical rainfall events that had caused major flooding of small rivers. Based on long-term observation datasets from the surrounding weather stations, regional mesoscale COSMO-CLM climate model results, and a detailed hydrological and water quality monitoring data, we performed a pioneer assessment of climate change and urbanization impact on flooding hazard and water quality of the urban Setun River as a case study. Statistically significant rise of some moderate ETCCDI climate change indices (R20mm and R95pTOT) was revealed for the 1966–2020 period, while no significant trends were observed for more extreme indices. The combined impact of climate change and increased urbanization is highly non-linear and results in as much as a fourfold increase in frequency of extreme floods and shift of water regime features which lead to formation of specific seasonal flow patterns. The rainstorm flood wave response time, involving infiltrated and hillslope-routed fraction of rainfall, is accounted as 6 to 11 h, which is more than twice as rapid as compared to the non-urbanized nearby catchments. Based on temporal trends before and after rainfall flood peak, four groups of dissolved chemicals were identified: soluble elements whose concentrations decrease with an increase in water discharge; mostly insoluble and well-sorted elements whose concentrations increase with discharge (Mn, Cs, Cd, Al); elements negatively related to water discharge during flood events (Li, B, Cr, As, Br and Sr); and a wide range of dissolved elements (Cu, Zn, Mo, Sn, Pb, Ba, La, Cs, U) which concentrations remain stable during rainfall floods. Our study identifies that lack of research focused on the combined impacts of climate change and urbanization on flooding and water quality in the Moscow urban area is a key problem in water management advances.

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Field studies were supported by Russian Science Foundation project 19–77-30004. The analytical experiments were done under Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Russian Federation project 075–15-2021–574. COSMO-CLM model setup is a part of RFBR project 21–55-53039. The methodology of this study is developed under the Interdisciplinary Scientific and Educational School of Lomonosov Moscow State University «Future Planet and Global Environmental Change» and Kazan Federal University Strategic Academic Leadership Program (“PRIORITY-2030”). The research is carried out using the equipment of the shared research facilities of HPC computing resources at Lomonosov Moscow State University. Streamflow patterns analysis was carried out under Governmental Order to Water Problems Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, subject no. FMWZ-2022–0003, project 3.7.

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Sergey Chalov, Vladimir Platonov, Oxana Erina, Vsevolod Moreido, Mikhail Samokhin, Dmitriy Sokolov, Maria Tereshina, Yulia Yarinich & Nikolay Kasimov

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Conceptualization, original draft preparation—Sergey Chalov; numerical experiments conducting and evaluation, precipitation data analysis, writing—Vladimir Platonov; the rainfall-runoff patterns analysis—Vsevolod Moreido; methodology, validation, writing—Oxana Erina, Dmitriy Sokolov, Maria Tereshina, Mikhail Samokhin; precipitation data preparation and visualization—Yulia Yarinich; review, editing—Nikolay Kasimov. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Chalov, S., Platonov, V., Erina, O. et al. Rainstorms impacts on water, sediment, and trace elements loads in an urbanized catchment within Moscow city: case study of summer 2020 and 2021. Theor Appl Climatol 151 , 871–889 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-022-04298-9

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Published : 07 December 2022

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-022-04298-9

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