Promoting Case-Based Learning in Business Higher Education in the Middle East and North Africa Region

Abstract

The case method has made inroads as a pedagogical tool that can sharpen students’ analytical skills and better prepare them for the reality awaiting them professionally. Despite its deep-seated origins in the West, the case method remains underused in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The purpose of this study is to explore the main challenges that MENA business higher education institutions face in effecting case-based learning and the key initiatives that may help in addressing them. Building on our extensive experience with case studies production and teaching in the MENA context, and a pioneering exploratory research involving 40 instructors, students, and administrators from three leading business schools in Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia, we shed new light on the skills and contextual challenges that MENA business higher education institutions encounter when implementing the case method. We also propose a framework that integrates a wide range of initiatives to promote case-based learning in MENA. At the heart of this framework is the “community building” effort advocated as a catalyst to support case writing, teaching, solving, and publishing, as well as the development of a culture conducive to an effective deployment of the case method in the specific MENA context.

An Instructional Innovation That Embeds Group Learning in Case Teaching: The Table Case Method

“…in the service of thinking” (Lundberg & Winn, 2005, p. 275). Emphasis is placed on students recognizing different concepts in the case and selecting theories and models appropriate to the situation (Becheikh et al, 2022; Lundberg et al, 2001). Specific learning objectives for case teaching range from familiarization with knowledge and techniques, building skills in analysis and synthesis, and developing values and attitudes (Dooley & Skinner, 1977; Pessoa et al, 2022).…”

“…Case studies are well established for teaching a business way of thinking (Bridgman et al, 2018; Reynolds, 1978) and are widely used in undergraduate and postgraduate business education around the world (Becheikh et al, 2022; Lundberg et al, 2001). The traditional approach for teaching case studies is the Socratic method pioneered by Harvard Business School (Desiraju & Gopinath, 2001; Dooley & Skinner, 1977), which has been criticized for limiting student learning by being overly instructor-centric (Argyris, 1980; Siciliano & McAleer, 1997).…”

“…This criticism is most prevalent in undergraduate teaching compared to MBA and executive teaching, where an instructor may be able to facilitate vigorous discussion among managers and executives in the context of a focal case (Garvin, 2007). In comparison, undergraduate students, who tend to lack confidence and business experience especially early in their degree programs (Hendry et al, 2017), and students from non-Western cultures (Becheikh et al, 2022) often struggle to make connections between management theory and practice when cases are taught using instructor-centric Socratic methods (Lundberg & Winn, 2005). This has prompted calls for the use of theory in the case method to be rejuvenated (Bridgman et al, 2018) and for the development of student-centric instructional innovations for teaching cases (Desiraju & Gopinath, 2001; Lebron et al, 2020).…”

Do Cases Always Deliver What They Promise? A Quality Analysis of Business Cases in Higher Education

“…Case studies have been used widely and are a long-standing method in teaching and learning in higher education (HE), both generally and specifically in management education [1][2][3][4][5]. Many different types of case studies are available from publishing companies including The Case Centre, Ivey Publishing and Harvard Business School Publishing.…”

“…However, there is little empirical evidence of the pedagogic aspect of their usage [8,9] (p. 34), and only quite old and rudimentary evidence of how using case studies influences the learning process, or the conditions under which their advantages can be exploited [10] (p. 407). The literature, meanwhile, consistently emphasises the authentic real-life orientation of case studies as a mark of their quality, similarly downplaying pedagogic aspects and findings from research into teaching and learning [1,[10][11][12]. From an HE perspective, this is problematic, as the pedagogic content of case studies is considered crucial both for establishing links to subject-specific academic content and for designing structured learning for students.…”