Restating the Case: How Revisiting the Development of the Case Method Can Help Us Think Differently About the Future of the Business School

Todd Nicholas Bridgman · Stephen Paul Cummings · Colm McLaughlin

107 citations0/0 files storedAcademy of Management Learning and Education

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Management and Marketing Education Management Theory and Practice Management and Organizational Studies

Abstract

Although supportive of calls for business schools to learn the lessons of history to address contemporary challenges about their legitimacy and impact, we argue that our ability to learn is limited by the histories we have created. Through contrasting the contested development of the case method of teaching at Harvard Business School and the conventional history of its rise, we argue that this history, which promotes a smooth linear evolution, works against reconceptualizing the role of the business school. To illustrate this, we develop a “counterhistory” of the case method—one that reveals a contested and circuitous path of development—and discuss how recognizing this would encourage us to think differently. This counterhistory provides a means of stimulating debate and innovative thinking about how business schools can address their legitimacy challenges, and, in doing so, have a more positive impact on society.

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References

1995Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches 1978Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison 1978Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.1975Organizational Legitimacy: Social Values and Organizational Behavior 2005Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices 1990The Double-Edge of Organizational Legitimation 2000Science and the Modern World 1975Journal of Higher Education

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