Shinichi Takeuchi: Facing the "Case Method"

2018/07/19

I wonder if any of my fellow Keio University alumni have heard the term "case method" somewhere before. Probably fewer than 10% of Japanese adults would answer "yes" to this question, and even for readers of Mita-hyoron (official monthly journal published by Keio University Press), it may be an unfamiliar term.

The case method is an educational term that describes a certain teaching method (or more simply, a "way of making people learn"). In today's turbulent society, education is becoming increasingly important. Teaching methods are diversifying accordingly, but many seem short-lived, gaining attention only to be forgotten. In such an environment, the case method can be called a long-lived teaching method that continues to receive strong support from society, despite repeatedly being praised or questioned.

I have been facing the case method for over 15 years, but now I am renewing my stance toward it once again. In this article, I will speak about the full extent of my thoughts on the case method.

If I were to try to answer this sub-heading in detail within the limited space, this article would turn into an "Introduction to the Case Method," so I will refrain. Nevertheless, what I want to note is that many learners look back and say, "The memory of learning through the case method is so vivid that it is still deeply etched in my heart." Many of these people now hold important positions in society. As a trend in their educational backgrounds, it is not uncommon for them to have a history of learning through the case method.

To add a little more explanation, in the case method teaching style, teachers refrain from explicit teaching. Learners take in the problem situation described in a booklet called a "case" and engage in thorough discussions with their peers on how to overcome it. The teacher asks further questions to support, encourage, and deepen that discussion. The classroom scene of a case method lesson is just like Socratic maieutics.

Writing it this way makes it go without saying, but while this teaching method is quite tough for students, the burden on the faculty side is significantly greater than that of the students. Even though the faculty member has a clear idea of "what they want to teach," they do not teach it directly, but rather let the students discuss and realize it for themselves. Perhaps due to this "roundaboutness," this teaching method may appear to researchers at the forefront of their fields as something that does not offer much to be viewed as attractive.

This teaching method was born in legal education in the 1870s in the United States, the homeland of case method education, and developed in management education from the 1920s onward. Later, as an indispensable teaching method for management education, it crossed the ocean in the 1950s and spread to Eastern Europe, South America, Asia, and the Middle East. At that time, Keio University received this teaching method from HBS (Harvard Business School) on behalf of Japan, and Keio Business School (KBS), the predecessor of the current Keio Business School (KBS) (Graduate School of Business Administration), became a pioneering practical school for case method education in Japan. I would like Keio University alumni to know this part of case method history.

Frankly speaking, it cannot be said that case method education has become widely popular in Japan. However, regarding the practice at KBS, we can proudly tell the world that it was a journey of pursuing high-level education purely and without compromise at a school-wide level. While there were many higher education institutions that formally imitated case method education during this time, it seems that no educational institution appeared that deepened it as much as KBS until very recently.

After working for an automobile manufacturer for 14 years, I enrolled in KBS as a working student with the goal of advancing my career as an automotive industry professional. Being showered with case method education at KBS became a turning point in my life.

In my eyes, having been engaged in human resource development at a company, the case method appeared to be an "extraordinary teaching method," and I intuitively felt that this was a "gold mine" for practical adult education. It was also significant that I met Professor Haruo Takagi (currently Professor Emeritus and Professor at Nagoya University of Commerce and Business Graduate School), a leading practitioner of case method education at KBS, and was able to receive direct guidance in my master's seminar.

In this way, I easily threw away my career as an automotive professional, and before I knew it, I found myself walking the path of a case method education researcher. The accumulation of experience from being allowed to serve as a specially appointed faculty member at KBS for 10 years was a major factor in my reaching my current position.

I feel that the case method is a teaching method that essentially possesses a great deal of "Keio University-ness." This is because I believe the principles and philosophy of case method education directly overlap with the endeavor to blossom the fragrant scholarship that Keio University's founding spirit, academic style, and successive generations of faculty, staff, graduate students, undergraduate students, and Keio University alumni have carefully woven.

I first felt this when I came across a passage in the "Statement of Intent for the Establishment of the Graduate School of Business Administration" submitted to the Ministry of Education in 1978. It stated the following:

"Among the principles and rules established by the science of management, it cannot be said that there are none that are effective in making the judgments to be taken as a manager rational and enhancing their insight. However, teaching methods that impart these as they are cause students' thinking to become fixed upon them, leading to a loss of flexibility in thought, or cause them to depend on 'authoritative' literature or the words of teachers for problem-solving, thereby avoiding the effort of thinking for themselves and, in turn, hindering the cultivation of a spirit of independence and self-reliance."

(Omitted) The abilities essential for a manager can only be fostered through training that does not shy away from repetition, and therefore, this Business School intends to rely on the case method for the majority of its curriculum."

I later learned that this text greatly reflects what five young faculty members, who worked hard to open KBS, learned at HBS and brought back. Even so, from various parts of the text, one can feel an intellectual freshness, the bittersweetness of scholarship, and even a sense of awe, showing the bold yet well-considered footsteps of Keio University as it stepped into the new field of management education. It seemed to me that beyond management education, there was a passionate logic aimed at uncompromising character building.

After teaching the "Case Method Teaching Method" to graduate students at KBS for 10 years, I moved to the Nagoya University of Commerce and Business Graduate School (NUCB BS) this April via Tokushima Bunri University. Having likely passed the midpoint of my life in terms of age, I intend to devote my remaining time to the case method at NUCB BS.

NUCB BS, which is also a pioneering accredited school for international business school certifications such as AACSB (The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) and AMBA (Association of MBAs), completed a tower campus dedicated to the business school (14 floors above ground and 1 below) in the center of Nagoya three years ago, equipped with a case method educational environment just like HBS or IMD (International Institute for Management Development). The NUCB headquarters visited top schools in Europe and the US together with a major construction firm and, while looking at both tradition and innovation, faithfully reproduced even the atmosphere of a business school that teaches through the case method.

Some might mock this as "starting with the form," but I can state with certainty that a teacher standing at the podium of a tiered classroom created this way could never feel like calmly lecturing on their own theories, and students would never feel like just listening to the teacher's words and waiting for the bell to ring while taking notes.

Organization-wide engagement with a teaching method manifests in this way at private universities. One of the major reasons I left my previous post in Tokushima and moved to Nagoya, despite being discourteous to those involved, was the existence of university management leaders who are strongly committed to case method education. Professor Haruo Takagi, who started teaching at NUCB BS a step ahead of me, probably felt the same way.

Thus, at NUCB, where Professor Takagi and I moved, a "Case Method Research Center" was newly established as an internal academic research organization this April, and I was appointed as its first Director. Here, instead of appointing faculty in charge of FD as research center staff, only those of dean-class were installed. The idea that "teaching methods are a matter for the dean" is very typical of NUCB.

My future work at this university will be two-pronged: "expanding the base of practice" and "increasing the degree of authenticity of practices that can be called 'the real thing'" for case method education practiced in various ways by various educational entities in Japan. Personally, I would like to place emphasis on the latter, but social needs concentrate on the former. I intend to find where the key to generating interaction between the former and the latter lies.

In recent years, teaching methods have tended toward techniques rather than philosophy, and their educational effects need to be evaluated more objectively than before. This wave is also reaching the education provided by leading groups in higher education. While short-term results are expected and the standardization of education is welcomed, the remaining of individual dependency is disliked. It is truly an era of "headwinds" for case method education, but "living in difficult times" will likely become a good page in the evolutionary theory of teaching methods.

The Case Method Research Center at NUCB BS intends to provide consultation for case method education throughout Japan, and will be able to provide information and technical support. Furthermore, using these activities as a driving force, we can look forward to the cultivation of doctoral degree holders who take case method education as their research subject in the not-too-distant future. While not many experts who can pass case method education to the next generation may appear, as long as it is "people" who connect history, we cannot see the developmental practice of the next generation without lodging it in people.

Professor David A. Garvin of HBS, from whom I received valuable research suggestions and with whom I also had discussions, passed away suddenly last year. In a small-scale world of practice with few key persons like the "case method education world," the early death of one such person easily changes the history of a teaching method. My final words are commonplace, but time is limited for us as well.