Case Studies, Ethics, Philosophy, and Liberal Learning for the Management Profession

Abstract

Case studies can be an important methodology for ethics and philosophy in humanistic management and liberal education as well as in the social sciences because they integrate a deeper, reflective, philosophical, and ethical understanding of the organization. A case study approach based on philosophy of management contributes to putting into practice the Carnegie Foundation report Rethinking Undergraduate Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession. This approach is both inductive and deductive and very different from a soft Socratic approach to case studies such as the one often used in business schools following the Harvard method, wherein students are supposed to get knowledge through the reading of a case prepared by the teacher or from a business textbook. The aim of the case study is to analyze a concrete case and get general knowledge through the integrated analysis of the different ethical, philosophical, and economic dimensions of the case. This article presents an argument for case studies that highlight ethics and philosophy in the following parts: (1) Introduction, (2) Historical and Philosophical Definitions of Case Studies, (3) The Quality and Structure of the Case Study, (4) Scientific Validity of Case Studies, (5) Application and Use of Case Studies in Philosophy of Management and Ethics of Organizations, and (6) Conclusion.

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