Case

Ramaswami looked at the crumpled piece of paper in front of him and sighed. He got up from his ergonomic chair and walked to the french window of the plush Director's cabin and looked out. Then he came back and sat on his chair and looked at the paper in front of him and sighed. He had come a long way from joining Indian Management Institute as a Deputy Director the previous year to becoming Director this year. It had been a troubled journey.

When he took over the top job at the Institute earlier this year, his predecessor had handed him this piece of paper. The paper was cryptically titled 'Exhibit 1' and had the following table.

Exhibit 1
Harvard : Case methodology
Stanford : Don't know
IMI : Should be same as Harvard?

He remembered spending many days trying to make sense of this table and giving up. He then had nothing to do for a few months and decided to hire a consultant and entrusted the task of generating 'Exhibit 2' to them. The consultants decided to 'listen to the market' and came up with some pithy findings summarised as 'Exhibit 2', just like Ramaswami wanted.

Exhibit 2
Number of student respondents surveyed : 200
Preferred pedagogy
Case study method : 0
Orthodox (lecture) : 0
Replacement of faculty with better faculty : 100
Refund of fees : 100

This was a disturbing trend indeed and to recover from this shock, Ramaswami decided to download some data from the internet which he playfully compiled as Exhibit 3.

Exhibit 3
Food production in Zambia last Thursday: 200 metric tonnes
Ratio of China's GDP and Distance from the earth to the moon : 20

As he was staring into open space, some realistic questions occurred to Ramaswami.
Should I continue as Director? (5 marks)
Should this Institute continue with the case-study method? (15 marks)
How many exhibits on an average should a case have? (5 marks)

He was clueless but he was sure of one thing, the answers to these would occur to him by 4 pm the next day.