Case Studies

There are two types of case studies, namely factual ones depicting real organizations, people, and situations and fictional ones that, although usually based loosely on actual people and events, do not use real organization's or people's names.

The advantage of factual case studies are that they can provide a wealth of detail, give credibility to situations and problems, and, most important, provide real outcomes. Actual results give those who analyze a case real-world solutions. Although factual cases furnish conrete, not theoretical, solutions, they also have some drawbacks. Often students or case discussants get hung up debating the details of the case as they may remember them. Some discussants claim inside information or refer to later outcomes that bring the organization's solutions into question. When discussing factual cases, analysts tend to focus on the accuracy of the details rather than on the appropriateness of the solutions. The most effectual use of factual cases are for describing current organizational problems, then analyzing and attempting to solve the problems using a consultative approach.

Fictional cases have the drawback that students can never know if a solution worked or not. Fictional cases are theoretical ones, and thus often do not have the credibility that factual ones do and are not constrained by the facts but open to poetic license to embellish on problems, issues, situations and people in order to focus only on the problems addressed.

Often the best solution is to create a fictional case study that closely parallels factual situations.