Highlighting the Value of Case Writing: Dr. Olga Kandinskaia’s Special Session at the 30th Annual Multinational Finance Society Conference

Last week, Dr Olga Kandinskaia, Associate Professor of Finance and Director of MSc in Green and Digital Management at UoL, participated in the 30^th Annual Conference of the Multinational Finance Society in Finland at the University of Vaasa.

The conference program featured 125 papers by participants from 35 countries and included two keynote presentations:

– thought-provoking speech “Divergent Women (and Men)” by prominent economist Dr Renee Adams, Oxford University, with the ultimate message that we should never stereotype,

– informative paper presentation on climate finance by Dr Jerome Detemple, Boston University, showing evidence on the various green transition incentives, whereas the carbox tax seems to be less efficient than green energy subsidies.

Dr Olga Kandinskaia delivered a special 1.5-hour session on writing teaching cases in finance. Dr Kandinskaia is an award-winning case author. She is on the Board of the North American Case Research Association (NACRA) where her role this year is President.

This special session was intended to fill in the information gap about the peer-reviewed case writing as scholarly research activity with the purpose to support the development of case writing by finance faculty of especially smaller or quantitative-research-driven universities where peer support for such activity is limited at best, while the value of case research may be underestimated by school deans. 

The session covered:

1. Benefits of the case method for students’ learning, faculty development, and school’s research portfolio and community outreach
2. Guidelines on how to write an engaging case for teaching in the classroom and how to create an effective instructor’s manual
3. Overview of academic publication opportunities for cases
4. Peer support for academic case writers and opportunities for funding support

In his recent paper ‘What the Case Study Method Really Teaches’ in Harvard Business Review, Professor Nohria, former Dean of Harvard Business School, listed seven meta-skills that the case method develops in students: 1) preparation, 2) discernment, 3) bias recognition, 4) judgement, 5) collaboration, 6) curiosity, 7) self-confidence.

Case publications are valuable additions to a school’s research portfolio since they advance the scholarship of teaching and learningand facilitate accreditations. According to Stephanie M Bryant, AACSB’s Global Chief Accreditation Officer,case writing is wholeheartedly counted as an intellectual contribution for the purpose of AACSB’s accreditation standards:

• Standard 8 of the 2020 Business Accreditation Standards identifies “teaching and learning scholarship” as one of the three categories of intellectual contributions. Teaching and learning scholarship defines this category as: “intellectual contributions that explore the theory and methods of teaching and advance new understandings, insights, content, and methods that impact learning behavior.”