BUSINESS CASE STUDIES

Contents
How to analyze, write, study and discuss business cases. 
   
Collections of business case studies on the Web
including New Zealand business cases

Business case study journals

Finding New Zealand business case studies in the Library

Finding case studies in the business databases.

Link to the
University of Auckland Business School Case Centre

What are business case studies?

• Business case studies can be summaries of a real-life business scenarios or fictitious accounts of a business situation or dilemma. The links below relate to both types of business cases.
• Case studies enable students to analyse business issues from a variety of perspectives and apply research and problem solving skills.
• Business case studies can illustrate business theory studied in class and show the application of theory.

Analysing & writing case studies - web links

• Analyzing a case study Houghton Mifflin
• Analysing a case study in business courses UniSA
• How to analyse a case study Pearson Education 
• Analysing case studies, Part 1, Part 2 Massey University YouTube video
• Preparing an effective case analysis South Western College Publishing
• Analysing and writing case studies, Cengage Learning
• How to write the Case Study, Monash University
• Case writing guide Professor. K. Thomas Chandy, Binghamton University, State University of New York
• Guidelines for case writing Schreyer Institute for Innovation in Learning
  

• Times 100 Case Studies can be browsed by company name.
• Case Studies in Business Management. IBS Case Development Centre, Asia Pacific case repository. (for purchase)
• Casestudy.inc.com (for purchase)
• Caseplace.org The Aspen Institute. Links to cases held on other sites, (requires log in to view)
• Case Studies, Australian Businesses Global Markets, Australian Government
• CaseNet , South-Western College Publishing, (requires registering to view cases)
• Business Gateway Case studies on starting a small business (freely available)
• Acadia Institute of Case Studies (AICS). School of Business Administration at Acadia University.Focus is on entrepreneurship and small business operations. (freely available)
• On the Case . BIZED. A series of case studies that were developed from FT articles in 2001, (freely available)
  

The following institutions distribute Business School cases. Abstracts are often available but most require payment for the full text of each case. There are some New Zealand cases in these collections.

• European Case Clearinghouse, publishes and sells case studies from international business schools
• Darden Case collection, cases available for free download from Social Science Research Network (SSRN)
• Richard Ivey School of Business, cases by theme (for purchase)
• Harvard Business School Cases & Teaching Materials  (for purchase)
• Melbourne Case Study Services , Melbourne Business School. Approximately 400 Australian and New Zealand business cases. (for purchase)
• Stanford Graduate School of Business Cases (for purchase)
• MacQuarie Graduate School of Management case studies (freely available)
• Thunderbird Graduate School - business cases (for purchase)
• Nanyang Case collection, Nanyang Business School, Singapore (for purchase)
• The North American Case Research Association (NACRA)
• INSEAD case studies (for purchase)

• University of Auckland Business Case Centre
• Case studies: New Zealand businesses in Australia, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. (freely available)
• CANZ (Competitive Advantage New Zealand) University of Victoria. Several New Zealand company case histories, freely available
• Case studies on New Zealand businesses that are using the Internet and e-commerce. N.Z. Ministry of Economic Development  Ecommerce Guide for Business. (freely available)
• New Zealand Business Case Research Centre Otago University, (cases forthcoming)
• Investment NZ, Scroll down page to locate case studies on bioscience, creative industries, ICT & food & beverage
  
• I-Start New Zealand ICT e-business portal (has a number of freely available N.Z. business cases)
• Business Case Studies, Immigration New Zealand. Freely available case studies that showcase successful N.Z. businesses
• Case Studies, Workplace Productivity in Practice New Zealand Department of Labour, (freely available)
• Case Studies, work Life Balance in New Zealand New Zealand Department of Labour , (freely available)
• Case Studies, Partnership Resource Centre, New Zealand Department of Labour , (4 cases on NZ companies, freely available)
• Case Studies, Australia & New Zealand School of Government, Topical case studies for public sector management development, available to members.
• Sustainable Tourism Case Studies, New Zealand Ministry of the Environment, (5 freely available)
• Australian Business Case Studies, includes New Zealand cases and learning activities, (freely available).
  
  

Select list of business case study journals
Links are either to journal web sites or access to journals via our library catalogue. Access to library journals require netaccount log in.

• The Management Case Study Journal (University of South Australia). Contains cases that have application in graduate management education in the Asia Pacific context, (freely available)
• The Asian Case Research Journal Cases on Asian companies in Asia-Pacific.
• The Journal of Business Case Studies
• Case research journal, North American Case Research Association. Can search abstracts of cases
  
• Asian Journal of Management Cases.
• Journal of the International Academy for Case Studies 
• International Journal of Cases on Electronic Commerce - access through InfoSciOnline Database
• The magazine Unlimited often includes case studies on New Zealand businesses. Unlimited website has a searchable archive.
  

Finding New Zealand business case studies in the Library

Use a Guided Keyword Search in the Library catalogue. Search for case studies as a phrase, combine with additional search terms in the second search box such as Management, New Zealand etc.

These are some examples of subject headings for case study material in our library catalogue. These terms listed below can be used in a subject field search in the library catalogue.

• Electronic commerce case studies
• Entrepreneurship New Zealand case studies
• Business ethics case studies 
• Business Enterprise case studies
• Business logistics New Zealand case studies
• Business networks New Zealand case studies
• Electronic commerce New Zealand case studies
• Industrial management case studies
• International business enterprises Management Case studies.
• Management Case studies
• Management New Zealand Case studies
• Organizational effectiveness Case studies

A select list of books containing New Zealand business cases available from our library

Bartol, T. Tein, M. Matthews M & Martin, D. (Eds.), Management: A Pacific Rim Focus (4th ed.) North Ryde: McGraw Hill.
Batley T. (Ed.), Business Case Studies in Operations Management. Auckland: Prentice Hall.
Clark, D. (2001) Strategic management cases, Auckland, N.Z. : Prentice Hall.
Dunn W. & Hunter, I. (2008) Managing in an international context : New Zealand case series, a McGraw-Hill Custom publication prepared for the University of Auckland Business Case Centre .North Ryde, NSW : McGraw-Hill Australia.
Enderwick, P & Akoorie, M. (1996) Fast forward : New Zealand business in world markets Auckland, N.Z. : Longman Paul.
Elkin G. (Ed.), Human resource management in action. Contemporary New Zealand cases-Vol 2. (pp. 30-32). Palmerston North: Dunmore Press Limited.
Elkin G. (Ed.), Organisational behaviour in action: Contemporary New Zealand case studies and learning materials for management education and training. University of Otago, Dunedin: Centre for Management Cases.
Frederick, H. Kuratko D. & Hodgetts, R. (Eds.), Entrepreneurship. Theory, process & practice. Asia-Pacific Edition Melbourne:Thomson. Hill, C. Cronk, T. & Wickramasekera, R. (Eds.), Global business today: An Asia-Pacific perspective. Melbourne, Australia: McGraw-Hill Education.
Hooper,V. (2007) New Zealand case studies in information systems Auckland, N.Z. : Pearson Education New Zealand.
Inkson K. & Kolb, D. (2002) Management: perspectives for New Zealand. Auckland, N.Z. : Pearson Education.
Jackson B. & Parry K. (2001) The hero manager: learning from New Zealand’s top chief executives Auckland: Penguin.
Lewis et al. (1996) Cases in strategic management: Australia and New Zealand Edition: 2nd ed. Sydney [N.S.W.] : Prentice Hall.
Millar S. &  Theunissen, C. (2008) Managing organisations in New Zealand Edition: 3rd ed.North Shore, N.Z. : Pearson Education.
Mulholland, M. (with the assistance of Te Au Rangahau) (2006) He wairere pakihi : Māori business case studies. Palmerston North, N.Z. : Massey University, College of Business Studies.
Page, D. J. &  Zorn, T.E. (2007) Management communication : New Zealand and Australian case studies Auckland, N.Z. : Pearson Prentice Hall
Poulin, B. Mills, B. & Spiller, D. (1998) Strategy and management : a New Zealand casebook Auckland, N.Z. : Longman.
Ramburuth, P. & Welch, C. (Eds.), Casebook in international business. Australian and Asia-Pacific Perspectives, Frenchs Forest, Australia: Pearson Education Australia.
Smollan, R. Sisley, R & Le Fevre, M.(200) Applied management : New Zealand case studies Palmerston North, N.Z. Dunmore Press.
Smyth, N. , Norman L. & Ikin, M.  (2008) Taking care of business : indigenous business case studies : sharing our vision, determining our future, impacting our world. Te Kuiti, N.Z. : Aotahi, 2008.
.Wilson, M.(Ed.) (2005) Case in point : best cases from the 2005 International Conference on Case Study Teaching and Learning  Auckland, N.Z. : GSE Publications, 2005.
Winsley,P. Gilbertson, D. & Couchman, P. (2001) Managing innovation in New Zealand : case studies. Volumes I, II & III. Palmerston North, N.Z. : Dunmore Press.

Finding case studies in the Library business databases 
(Note you will need your netID and password to access databases)

TIP: Most business databases allow you combine "case study" as a subject term with other subject terms and keywords..When searching across the database files for case studies it is often useful in databases such as ABI/Inform and Business Source Premier that contain both scholarly and popular business articles to limit your results to academic or scholarly material only

The Harvard Business Review publishes a case study, (usually fictional) in each issue. These can be located in Business Source Premier database by using the drop down taband combining Harvard Business Review in the publication name field with case studies in the subject field. See example.

or enter Harvard Business Review in the publication name field and scroll down to the Document type box and select Case Study.
See example from Business Source Premier search page:

Business and Management Practices Database - can select case studies as a document type in a search

Emerald Management Xtra database - select Advanced search feature to be able to limit searches to article types and select case study.

Information Technology Case Studies Database - case studies covering the areas of IT and E-commerce

Factiva - use "case study" in the headline and lead paragraph, then combine with terms from company, subject, industry or region pull-down menus.

Google Scholar - search Google Scholar for cases combining "case studies" with other keywords and phrases
.

Broken links, comments and suggestions to: Lynne Mitchell
 Last updated: November 13, 2009