JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT EDUCATION / October 2001 Ashamalla, Crocitto / STUDENT-GENERATED CASE ANALYSES STUDENT-GENERATED CASES AS A TRANSFORMATION TOOL

The case method has endured as an effective pedagogical tool in business education for close to a century. Most recently, its use is indicated as a mea-sure of the quality of MBA programs (Tracy & Waldfogel, 1997). In its clas-sic form, students are presented with a written description of some facts and events involved in a particular situation. The student is required to use theo-retical concepts to analyze problems and develop recommendations to improve the situation. Discussions in a group setting using the Socratic method of questioning are utilized to guide the case analysis (Lavitt, 1992; Spizizen & Hart, 1985). A major benefit of case analysis is its capacity to heighten the relevance of theoretical material to an unseasoned undergradu-ate as well as an experienced student. However, the effectiveness of the case analysis may be diminished if a particular case is perceived as irrelevant or uninteresting to the learner. One way to overcome this limitation is to have students write their own cases (Argyris, 1980; Owneby, 1992; Rasmussen, 1984; Schnelle, 1967). The purpose of this article is to present the student-generated case as a learning tool and to describe how it can be used as another form of the classi