We had to do two case studies for Integrated Performance management before the end of this week: Paper & Carton versus Detroit automobiles. The case study method was in fact introduced by Harvard Business School some time ago. It usually starts with a 2 to 6 pager you have to read on a given case - it is well built up, structured and has exhibits. Either you are to do the assignment yourself or in group but the purpose is to solve the problem before you really know how to solve the problem.
Case studies urges you to discover new ways of looking at information, facts or data. In fact, the student is faced with a murder mystery like situation and first has no clue who-has-donnit. Then you start analyzing, let intuition play a role, revive past experiences, talk to some people, apply some common sense, look for links and whatever is left as a solution - how irrational it may seem - is the solution.But sometimes the course does not end in class - you have to put in some extra study hours at home to read and work on the cases yourself. Depending on the subject this might take from a couple of hours to a full day of hard work. Now, you still have your fellow MBA students as a safety net. See it as a buddy system - get in some feedback from the group, find the expert... leverage the knowledge of the crowd seems like an appropriate statement here. It's just like in the corporate jungle: you need a network that you can rely on - and on the flip side a network that can rely on you - it's all about reciprocity.
Now our class of seventeen is a network that is mainly composed of decision makers - in fact, it does not matter if it is on operational, managerial, executive, IT, sales or whatever level - we all have to take decisions in our daily professional lives. But nowadays we work with teams to analyze situations, dive into cases and prepare decision making. We don't do solo-slims anymore... we have to look for synergy - ever since ancient Greece, syn-ergos, συνεργός i.e. synergy has stood for: a situation where different entities cooperate advantageously for a final outcome. Our Greek philosopher friend Aristotle summed it up pretty well in 2300 before Google when he stated "the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts".
That's what the case study method is all about - Ground rule # 4: case studies are about putting the individual parts together without the manual. And sometimes this implies old-fashioned RFTM work and do some self-study. This week, I had transfer pricing, incentive-based transfer pricing, marginal costs, optimal quantity, allocation of indirect costs, responsibility centers, equity considerations and the holy grail of management accounting: ROI and Economic Value added. Mighty residual if you ask me... but Yes - I get the point - I now see how I should investigate my murder mystery at Paper & Carton and Detroit automobiles! And Yes, my first ideas were pretty much aligned with the theories - it only needed a couple of ratios and formulas to calculate it - but hey, that's what Excel is for right?
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