Case Study, the Flagship of Harvard Business School: Any Cases for Ghana?

Abstract

Purpose: This paper examined case study use and development by academics in business schools in Ghana. The paper captured major issues pertaining to the nature and challenges of case study usage and development. Methodology: Consistent with the previous studies in case study utilization among academics, a quantitative cross-sectional approach was adopted to understand the phenomenon of case studies as a method in the teaching at the university. Findings: The study discovered that majority of academics are yet to incorporate case studies into their teaching processes at the universities in Ghana. This problem is largely anchored on inadequate local content cases for teaching and learning at these institutions, coupled with the lack of motivation of academics to break from the lecture-dominating method of teaching, inadequate know-how to write own cases and lack of financial support to develop and deploy case study pedagogy. Additionally, it emerged that writing of overview and analysis of case, preparation of case study appendices and preparation of teaching notes accompanying cases were the three areas that posed most difficulty to business academics in Ghana in developing cases for teaching. Research limitation: The study was conducted from only the perspective of lecturers without considering the views of students. Originality/value: The paper brings to the fore major issues on the usage and development of case studies among academics of tertiary institutions in Ghana and contributes to the relatively parsimonious literature on case studies as a teaching method in lower middle-income countries of which Ghana is no exception.