Teaching Ethical Conflict Provoking Cases

The major reason for aborting a case in process is that it lacks conflict. Controversy is the essence of a good case discussion: it engages people; it forces them to think through and defend their position; and it demonstrates to them that while there are generally no right answers, there are certain questions.

Most cases are fundamentally about something controversial: a public policy over which people disagree; a managerial decision that involves difficult tradeoffs; an ethically questionable political strategy. A major goal of professional training is to give students practice in dealing with difficult analytic and management problems. Cases that raise genuinely tough problems provide the best kind of target practice.

Conflict can be elusive, however. Like a mirage, what looks like a dilemma from a far may not always be one on a closer view. If a manager has little choice of action, given political realities, or if the analyst evaluative criteria lean heavily toward one policy option, then there is little room for argument and hence case discussion.

These conflict provoking issues were not apparent from cursorily reading the case; identifying them required the instructor deep immersion in the case and a sharp appreciation for what the innovators must have considered behind the scenes. That is typical of cases that are not obviously controversial: They are harder to teach and require a deeper understanding of the material by the instructor. When cases are directly about controversy, by contrast, the issues are more visible and the debate fuels itself.

Controversy, even in success stories, generally collects around decision points. Many perhaps most teachers find that all else being equal, a case works better if it leaves those decisions unresolved that is , if it presents a choice or decision that confronts a manager or analyst without revealing what the protagonist did and the consequences of that action. A case that forces students to make a decision proves more effective at getting them to take the first person perspective rather than looking on from the outside. The need for a concrete decision also lends the situation a sense of immediacy.

Whatever the format, a sharply focused decision is essential to a prospective case. People can evaluate a manager broad organizational strategy retrospectively, but it is difficult to get it to formulate one in advance in all its dimensions; a more useful task is for them to decide a seemingly small issue that represents, in microcosm, the larger strategic problem the manager faces.

Occasionally a case looks at something that is itself not controversial: a just completed case describes an innovative system for jury recruitment that several counties in Massachusetts and elsewhere have recently adopted. Even when the pedagogic issues seem clear in advance, that is no guarantee. The case may turn out to be about something quite different (newspaper reports sometimes bear little resemblance to the account that personal interviews eventually yield). More often a case ends up raising many more issues than were anticipated. In any event, the sooner one can specify the likely teaching function a case will serve, the more efficiently and effectively it can be written.