Applying Theory to Practice: Implementing a Live Case Competition in a Capstone Strategic Management Course

Abstract

When facilitating large-scale instructional change, leaders face stakeholder tensions that arise from different institutional pressures. Over the past 4 years, we have created an innovative live case competition in a strategic management course as our college’s signature undergraduate experiential learning opportunity. This case has integrated the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business’ (AACSB) business knowledge and skill areas with grounded learning elements and course learning objectives. Each semester, over 350 students apply strategy concepts to analyze challenges provided by a local company. Course section winners present to executive judges in the final competition. We contribute to the literature by describing the live case competition created from a six-step collaborative process that managed stakeholder tensions as institutional pressures changed. Using distributed leadership and information-sharing approaches, our collaboration model helped us address different needs, share resources, adapt to institutional pressures and create sustainable experiential learning opportunities. With shared decision making and constructive dialogue, we developed high-quality student learning experiences that respected faculty autonomy, addressed resource limitations, and institutionalized business partnerships. We describe our motivation, context, and key stakeholders’ (faculty, students, executives, and administrators) challenges and solutions. We hope our collaborative model helps others successfully implement large-scale instructional change.

Keywords

strategic management case competition experiential learning AACSB grounded learning

Introduction

To compete in today’s environment, business schools face increasing institutional pressures from accreditation agencies and employers to modernize their curriculum with experiential learning that applies business knowledge and skills (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business [AACSB], 2016; Bell, Kanar, & Kozlowski, 2008; Starkey & Tempest, 2009). The AACSB (2016) encourages student learning that engages students inside and outside the classroom to understand business challenges within our larger societal context. Through real-world case studies, students gain hands-on knowledge and practical experience (Kolb, 1984; Snell, Chan, Ma, & Chan, 2015; Wimmer, Meyers, Porter, & Shaw, 2012).

Facing institutional pressures to effectively align our curriculum with AACSB accreditation standards, our business college initiated a faculty-driven curriculum redesign process to add more experiential learning to courses. This resulted in a new live case competition, which was a faculty-driven change, strongly supported by our Dean, and has actively engaged 1,400 students across 62 sections over the past 4 years. Our strategic management course typically used written cases. We made this case-based instructional approach more experiential by having students work concurrently with executives. In contrast to traditional written cases that are retrospective, a live case has provided opportunities for students to interact with executives to analyze current management challenges. Students applied strategic management concepts to the firm and its competitive environment, critically analyzed strategic problems and presented feasible solutions.

This large-scale instructional change required us to effectively manage stakeholder tensions common in institutional contexts with limited resources (e.g., time, funding, and administrative support) and change resistance (Dean & Forray, 2017; Kotter, 1995; Madsen & Turnbull, 2006; Mitchell, Parlamis, & Claiborne, 2015; Rashford & de Figueiredo, 2011). We learned these tensions were associated with changing pressures specific to each stakeholder’s environmental context. We had to embrace our stakeholders’ (faculty, student, administrator, and executive) concerns with integrity, and respect different needs, for positive change to occur.

Our collaborative model provides a framework for university leaders to identify and understand key stakeholder pressures when implementing large-scale instructional change. An initial core challenge we faced was as follows: “How can we effectively manage stakeholder interests and partner with a local company to develop a live case competition as the signature experiential learning opportunity for all undergraduate business majors?” We contribute to instructional change literature by illustrating how a live case competition, our experiential learning opportunity, resulted from a collaborative six-step process with stakeholders. Through distributed leadership and information sharing among key stakeholders, we managed tensions effectively because we adapted as institutional pressures changed (Jones, Lefoe, Harvey & Ryland, 2012; Sharma et al., 2017). We collectively recognized our institutional context and imagined a future with shared resources and goals. We faced these tensions by acknowledging their existence, how they emerged, brainstorming solutions, and paving new roads for student learning. Consequently, we have sustained this large-scale instructional change for 4 years, even as key stakeholders, available resources, and institutional pressures have changed.

In this article, we share our insight about enacting sustainable, large-scale instructional change through our collaborative process that identifies stakeholder tensions, stakeholders’ perspectives, and their institutional contexts. We first describe how institutional pressures regarding AACSB alignment motivated our faculty-driven curriculum redesign. Second, we describe key stakeholder tensions that emerged. Third, we describe how we resolved these tensions through our collaborative process based in distributed leadership and information sharing. Finally, we describe our process’s advantages, limitations, and future research.

Motivating Instructional Change: Pressures and Faculty Shared Governance

Our university faced institutional pressures for instructional change to maintain accreditation, address uncertainty, and remain relevant to student and employer needs (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Pfeffer & Salancik, 1974; Salancik & Pfeffer, 1977, 1978; Scott, 2008).

University Context: Institutional Pressures for Legitimacy

Initially, our curriculum redesign reflected an isomorphic change process in the context of institutional pressures to align new curricular-based experiential learning with AACSB’s standardized knowledge and skill areas (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). AACSB’s accreditation standards “establish [ed] a cognitive base and legitimization” for business preparation programs (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983, p. 152). Accreditation processes created coercive pressures for our business college to remain accredited and perceived as legitimate by our students, faculty, and employers. We, like any business college concerned with acquiring and/or maintaining accreditation, became similar to other accredited businesses schools by adopting instructional standards. Without accreditation, our business school would not effectively recruit, nor retain, our students and faculty.

Predicting Isomorphic Change

In reflection, we found characteristics present in our environment indicated our college was likely to engage in large-scale instructional change to compete effectively. DiMaggio and Powell (1983) described key factors (e.g., uncertainty, professionalization, and dependency on another organization’s resource supply), which when presented within an organization’s context, influence how the organization will respond to institutional pressures. For example, our college responded to normative and coercive pressures to improve curricular-based experiential learning because we depended on AACSB accreditation. We believed our long-term success depended on optimally aligning our curriculum with AACSB knowledge and skills standards. We and business schools in our local geographic area competed for similar resources (e.g., students, employers, and internships). During conferences, faculty learned about new experiential learning initiatives at other business schools. Responding to mimetic pressures, we sought to reduce uncertainty in the minds of our stakeholders that we legitimately prepared students. Specifically, we used experiential learning with corporate partners, which applied theoretical and practical knowledge and skills. Thus, our resulting instructional change influenced perceptions that we offered legitimate learning experiences at least equal to those from our peer institutions.

Curriculum Redesign: Aligning AACSB Standards and Faculty Resistance

Through shared-governance processes, our faculty influenced college decision-making processes and instructional change outcomes (Stensaker & Vabo, 2013). When building large-scale support for curriculum change to meet institutional pressures, faculty and administration may disagree about how faculty should be involved (Miner, 2003). However, in our case, our Dean highly valued faculty involvement in our instructional change process.

In fall 2014, our Dean charged an 11-person business faculty curriculum-redesign task force to develop a modern, innovative business curriculum, but retain key core business courses. This task force reviewed curricula and learning experiences at peer institutions, which we identified based on: (a) AACSB accreditation, (b) perceived positive reputations (e.g., rankings), and/or (c) similar business concentrations. Additionally, they reviewed our college’s advisory board feedback and student performance data. The task force determined our curriculum needed more experiential learning with real-world business application to enhance students’ creativity, communication, analytical, and critical thinking skills.

Faculty initially resisted instructional change due to cultural values, fears of failing, and potentially upsetting current relationships (Mitchell et al., 2015). Through constructive feedback sessions, we showed value to all business faculty voices and addressed both cognitive and behavioral resistance, this allowed progressive change to occur (Prochaska, Redding, & Evers, 2015). In two town hall format business faculty meetings, the curriculum redesign task force requested feedback about adding a live case competition to the strategic management course to make it the business college’s signature student experience. This recommendation faced faculty criticism, primarily from strategic management instructors, who argued this instructional change would unduly affect some faculty more than others. In roundtable discussions, faculty expressed concerns about faculty autonomy, consistency across sections, workload, limited resources, performance evaluations, and students’ willingness to engage in the learning experience due to time constraints. These concerns were immediately processed with an all-faculty discussion for everyone to understand this resistance. Our process had increased faculty buy-in, trust in the administration, and shared understandings about changing environmental pressures (Hilton & Jacobson, 2012).

In the next all-faculty meeting, the task force explained how they had integrated the feedback. They chose the strategic management course for the competition because the case required students to integrate knowledge from prerequisite finance, marketing, accounting, and management courses; thus, the strategy course was the only senior course that met student prerequisite learning needs for a successful live case experience. To help get us get started, administrators would provide resources to launch the competition and allow strategic management faculty to create a long-term implementation plan. College faculty approved the change and added the live case competition as a requirement for all students.

Aligning AACSB Standards With Case Competition Learning Objectives

With the faculty’s approval, the Dean chartered a new Strategic Management Case Competition (SMCC) Task Force of strategic management faculty to create the competition as our college’s signature experiential learning opportunity. The live case was to be an effective instructional method to integrate strategic management knowledge with an experiential learning instructional design (McIver, Fitzsimmons, & Flanagan, 2016; McIver, Lengnick-Hall, Lengnick-Hall, & Ramachandran, 2013). This learning experience aligned AACSB standards and the college’s new strategic vision: Impact, Innovation, and Engagement.

In creating case competition learning objectives, we integrated AACSB general business and management knowledge and skill areas, grounded learning elements, and strategic management course learning objectives. We learned case analysis strengthened student learning (e.g., Liang &Wang, 2004, Druckman & Ebner, 2017), particularly when based in four key grounded learning elements (Mosca & Howard, 1997): creating real-world experiences, optimizing learning transfer, integrating theory and practice, and shifting learning responsibility (e.g., Corner et al., 2006). For example, Ross, Rosenbloom, and Lebrón (2017) described early successful case competition learning experiences that intentionally empowered students to determine how to apply key AACSB knowledge and skills to company challenges. We extend their work by describing how our collaborative process shared responsibility with stakeholders.

We integrated AACSB learning standards and case learning objectives with key knowledge that employers wanted students to learn. Our strategy course’s learning objectives included an analysis of organizations to understand why one firm outperforms other firms. Topics covered included strategic processes, sustainable competitive advantage, environmental analysis, competitive and corporate strategy, entrepreneurship, corporate governance, ethics, organizational design, and leadership concepts. In Table 1, we illustrate how we mapped competition learning objectives with AACSB knowledge and skills standards skills (labeled AK1-AK6 and AS1-AS8, respectively), grounded learning elements (G 1-4), and course learning objectives (C 1-4).

Table 1.

Case Competition Learning Objectives: Integrates AACSB Learning Standard 9 Curriculum Content, Grounded Learning, and Course Objectives.^a

AACSB		Grounded learning	Learning objectives (strategic management)
Business and management knowledge areas (AK)	Skill areas (AS)	Elements (G)	Course (C)	Case competition
AK1: Economic, political, regulatory, legal, technological, and social contexts of organizations in a global society AK2: Social responsibility, including sustainability, and ethical behavior and approaches to management AK3: Financial theories, analysis, reporting, and markets AK4: Systems and process in organizations, including planning and design, production/operation, supply chains, marketing, and distribution AK5: Group and individual behaviors in organizations and society AK6: Information technology and statistics/quantitative methods impact on business practices (e.g., data creation, sharing, analytics, mining, reporting, and storage between and across organizations ethically)	AS1: Effectively communicate in written and oral form AS2: Ethical understanding and reasoning (identify and respond to ethical issues in socially responsible manner) AS3: Analytical thinking (able to analyze and frame problems) AS4: Information technology (able to use current technologies in business and management contexts) AS5: Interpersonal relations and teamwork: work effectively with others and in team environments AS6 :Diverse and multicultural work environments: work effectively in diverse environments AS7: Reflective thinking: understand self in societal context AS8: Knowledge application: translate business and management knowledge in practice	G1: Creating a real-world experience G2: Optimizing learning transfer G3: Integrating theory and practice G4: Shifting learning responsibility	C1: Identify environmental contexts in strategic decision making and performance C2: Integrate and apply knowledge from college curriculum and course for internal and external analyses, strategic planning C3: Use holistic approach for a sustainable competitive advantage C4: Present written and oral analyses addressing strategic issues	Analyze current strategic management issue (AK1, AK4, AK5, AS2, G1, and G3) Analyze strategic management issue using holistic approach (AK2, AK4, AS2, G3, C2, and C3) Analyze external and internal environments (AK1, AK4, G2, C1, C2, and C3) Apply course concepts to analysis (AK6, G2, G3, and C2) Present competitive analysis at 2 levels, class and college (AK5, AS1, AS5, AS6, G1, G4, and C4) Complete high-quality written and oral presentations (AK6, AS1, AS3, AS8, C2, and C4) Prepare research-based analysis to support recommendations (AK3, AK6, AS3, AS8. G2, G3, and C2) Use research databases on course-wide website (AS4) Prepare postcompetition reflective paper (AS7)

Note. AACSB = Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. AACSB (2016, pp. 31-32) information from AACSB general business and management knowledge and skill areas.

Table extends Ross et al. (2017).

For example, the first case competition learning objective “analyze a current strategic management issue” was associated with AACSB standards as follows: (a) knowledge areas AK1, AK4, and AK5 required students to consider organizations, with their unique internal processes, as they exist within society and (b) knowledge area AK2 required students to make socially responsible recommendations. Similarly, this objective associates with grounded learning objectives G1 and G3 that require students to integrate theory and practice using a “real-world” perspective. The competition would help students learn to work effectively with peers with a team-based approach; students must learn to identify other students’ knowledge-based strengths effectively to analyze the company’s operations, production, supply chains, marketing, and distribution systems correctly.

Our Instructional Change: Strategic Management Live Case Competition

The competition represents 25% of the course grade. Teams of three to six students researched the company’s internal and external environments and recommended strategies that balance short-term with long-term stakeholder needs. In final presentations, students apply critical skills developed throughout their business education and proposed solutions. Faculty from each section first facilitate a section-based competition and select a winning team to represent the section in the finals. Winning teams present to corporate executives who judged the college-wide final competition, where they were formally recognized in an award ceremony.

Instructional Change in Context: Identifying and Understanding Stakeholder Tensions

After deciding to make this instructional change, tensions emerged because we disagreed about relevant stakeholders. Change-agents may inadvertently assume all key actors in large-scale instructional change are on the same page regarding who important stakeholders are (Russ, 2008). Our task force disagreed about the criteria to identify key stakeholders, such as based on organizational relationships (e.g., Thompson, Wartick, & Smith, 1991) or responsibilities (e.g., Alkhafaji, 1989). By considering the three elements described by Mitchell, Agle, and Wood (1997), we collaboratively identified the stakeholders relevant to managing change: their power to influence outcomes, legitimate relationship (current or potential) with the university, and urgency of “claim” (e.g., time-sensitive; importance) on the university. The curriculum-redesign process showed us that we tend to think within our own silos in academia. To address this, we committed ourselves to listen attentively to the needs of four stakeholder groups (faculty, students, external executives, and administrators) who we agreed had legitimate investment and influence in our specific instructional change process and outcomes.

For successful student learning outcomes, we critically considered all stakeholders’ concerns, expertise, and feedback from earlier competitions when making competition decisions (Gamble & Jelley, 2014). The faculty SMCC Task Force made sure faculty and administrators were on the same page regarding who and why these stakeholders’ voices were important for successful instructional change. Tensions decreased as we developed a common understanding about these differences. Our key stakeholder groups played essential roles with instructional change by their investment in its success and control of valuable resources (e.g., human resources, expertise, case competition engagement) in their networks (Carnabuci & Bruggeman, 2009; Liben-Nowell & Kleinberg, 2007; Wang, Rodan, Fruin, & Xu, 2014). In this section, we describe eight main challenges (Table 2) from four key stakeholders’ groups and how we responded within our context: (a) administrators (new vision); (b) faculty (autonomy, workload, and performance evaluation); (c) students (motivation, time constraints, and incentives); and (d) executives (aligning case to company interests).

Table 2.

Managing Stakeholder Tensions: Understanding and Responding to Key Challenges Through Collaborative Six-Step Process.

Stakeholder	Challenges	Solutions (responses)	Six-step collaborative process
Administration	1. Faculty resistance to vision	• Administration agrees to share some case competition project responsibilities, including recruiting the case company	• Steps 1 and 2
Faculty	2. Faculty autonomy	• Allow faculty latitude with multiple aspects of the case competition while clearly defining and limiting areas that need to be consistent across sections	• Steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6
	3. Faculty workload	• Share responsibilities with the Dean for recruiting companies • Create a common Bb site for information	• Steps 1 and 2• Step 4
	4. Faculty politics and evaluation	• Wide recognition of the case competition and extensive discussions regarding its importance and value. Therefore, faculty evaluations, done by the department committee, will recognize the case competition appropriately • Provide faculty SMCC coordinator with course relief incentive	• Step 6 • Step 3
Students	5. Student motivation and incentives	• Case competition allocated a large portion of the course grade (25%), and bonus extra incentives given to students participating in the final competition • Student effort is encouraged by the surety of peer evaluations and monitored by a postcompetition group reflective paper	• Step 5 • Steps 4, 5, and 6
	6. Student time constraints	• Course was streamlined, with fewer topics covered, to allow 4 weeks for the case competition	• Steps 4, 5
	7. Student desire for networking	• Instituted a town hall information session where students had the opportunity to ask questions and network with company executives	• Steps 3, 4, and 5
Executives	8. Executive contribution	• Involve executives in the writing of the case assignment, case information session, responding to student queries during the competition, and judging the final presentations • Use companies led by alums and those highly involved with the college	• Steps 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6

Note. SMCC = Strategic Management Case Competition.

Business College Administrators Stakeholders Tensions: Threats to Strategic Vision

Our college’s administration encouraged faculty to make instructional changes to maintain AACSB accreditation, which has created a high-profile status for the college within our university and local community. Our Dean minimizes stakeholder tensions through a guiding vision that has unified stakeholders to focus on our common student-centered learning objective—to attain real-world practical skills and knowledge through business partnerships. The Dean employed a college-wide process with strong faculty engagement to create an inclusive process to gather diverse views from faculty. Having led our college for over 10 years, our Dean played a stabilizing leadership role empowering faculty to build on prior success and continuously improve. For many years, the college had hosted a less complex competition that was highly regarded by community partners and students. However, it was limited in scope with approximately a dozen student volunteer participants once per year. In eliminating that competition, our Dean’s goal was that all students would have a similar experiential learning opportunity with corporate partners.

Challenge 1: Potential Threats to Administrative Vision

Tensions evolved as some faculty differed with the Dean and other faculty about the best way to optimize student learning. Although motivated to support the new experiential learning direction, some faculty were uncomfortable with changes to the capstone strategy course. This change decreased their time available to cover required course content and burdened faculty with recruiting new companies each year, managing executive relationships, and running the competition. Some students, too, were uncomfortable with the proposed change. It was an unfamiliar experience at a time when they neared graduation; they did not want any extra academic requirements. Yet other students were excited about an opportunity to work with a live company.

Response to potential threats to administrative vision

The Dean encouraged a faculty-driven implementation process, and motivated faculty by the expressed desire to make it our college’s signature business student experience. In seeking to understand why faculty were resistant, the administration validated faculty’s concerns. The administration took responsibility to recruit the company yearly, help manage event logistics, and provide technology support.

Faculty Stakeholder Tensions: Autonomy, Workload, Performance Evaluation

Faculty tensions emerged as faculty struggled in understanding how to effectively meet both case competition and other job responsibilities. The business school’s 135 faculty, of which 100 are full time, are responsible for teaching, research, and service; however, they are expected to spend time primarily teaching and publish in high-quality journals. Faculty are less diverse than students (70% male, 60% White). In this section, we describe three faculty challenges and our response: faculty autonomy, workload with limited resources, and managing organizational politics in performance evaluations.

Challenge 2: Perceived Threats to Faculty Autonomy

Some faculty perceived that a standardized case competition threatened our college culture that valued faculty autonomy; thus, they initially resisted a standardized case competition as a required component. The course has standardized learning objectives, but faculty delivered that content with their unique personalities and methods. For student learning to be “meaningful, and responsive to the uncertain,” our faculty believed their unique styles reflected the changing nature of businesses (Hendry, Hiller, Martin, & Boyd, 2017, p. 346). They valued autonomy to express different expertise and styles through different textbooks, assignments, and grading policies.

Some faculty were concerned the case competition would not effectively align with course learning objectives, nor significantly improve the course. They believed it forced conformity in thought, rather than valuing creative learning. For example, one professor described the competition “more like entrepreneurs working independently” to implement tasks not “necessarily supported” by course objectives. Although the competition may benefit students with entrepreneurial personalities (e.g., develop new product/service ideas), it might negatively affect nonentrepreneurial students. Furthermore, the case assignment was a heavily weighted item for the course grade. This capstone course already required a standardized, comprehensive business knowledge exam (10% course grade); therefore, faculty perceived they were required to give up autonomy for one third of their course. Different course section formats (e.g., lecture, fully online, and hybrid) created complications with different needs (Chen, Lambert, & Guidry, 2010). Also, faculty disagreed about when to launch the competition: an early release to allow students time to prepare versus a later release to allow faculty to cover related course concepts.

Responses to faculty autonomy concerns

Autonomy was respected by a faculty negotiation as to which case elements had to be consistent across all sections (e.g., timeline, grading rubric, and logistics). However, in their own sections, faculty determined how to assign students to teams and selected their “Section Champion” for the finals. Some faculty assigned students randomly, while others had students choose their own teams. They used different teaching methods, such as case-approaches, teaching case-related environment trends, and in-depth feedback on written assignments. In assessing section winners, some faculty had students write reports and conduct a presentation like in the finalist stage, while others asked students to advise them on the winner. Faculty collaboratively decided the schedule for the student information session with executives, section winner selection, and the final competition. The grading rubric was successfully negotiated by faculty (Table 3). A proposal to remove the comprehensive exam was considered but dropped as another course was not suitable.

Table 3.

Case Competition Grading Rubric.

Components (weights)	Exemplary (90% to 100%)	Proficient (70% to 89%)	Marginal (<70%)
External analysis of opportunities and threats Internal analysis of strengths and weaknesses (40%)	• Excellent use of Porter’s Five Forces and other tools to address all key general environment, industry, and competitive environment trends. • All key organization resources, competitive advantages, core competencies, and weaknesses fully identified and appropriately discussed. • All implications for BLUE BANK are explained in-depth, emphasizing consideration of BLUE BANK awareness building and branch uses for contemporary financial services. • Supplementary materials fully complement and support presentation. • All relevant aspects of BLUE BANK’s digital banking capabilities, existing, and planned platforms and digital banking competitors are fully considered.	• Adequate use of Porter’s Five Forces and other tools to address all key general environment, industry, and competitive environment trends. • Most key organization resources, competitive advantages, core competencies, and weaknesses fully identified and appropriately discussed. • Most implications for BLUE BANK are explained in-depth, emphasizing consideration of BLUE BANK awareness building and branch uses for contemporary financial services. • Supplementary materials adequately complement and support presentation. • Most relevant aspects of BLUE BANK’s digital banking capabilities, existing, and planned platforms and digital banking competitors are fully considered.	• Inadequate use of Porter’s Five Forces and other tools to address all key general environment, industry, and competitive environment trends. • Some key organization resources, competitive advantages, core competencies, and weaknesses fully identified and appropriately discussed. • Inadequate implications for BLUE BANK are explained with insufficient consideration of BLUE BANK awareness building and branch uses for contemporary financial services. • Supplementary materials inadequately complement and support presentation. • Some relevant aspects of BLUE BANK’s digital banking capabilities, existing and planned platforms and digital banking competitors are fully considered.
Resource requirements (10%)	• Excellent identification of resource requirements. • Resource needs are feasible and realistically priced. The total resource cost less than $50,000.	• Adequate identification of resource requirements • Resource needs are mostly feasible and realistically priced. Total resource cost less than $50,000	• Inadequate identification of resource requirements • Resource needs are not feasible and realistically priced. Total resource cost exceeds $50,000
Recommendations (30%)	• All assumptions are clearly explained and logical. • Strategic alternatives are fully explained. • Address all major issues for solving organizational problems and recommendations explained in-depth. • Strategic actions underlying the strategy are fully detailed. • Excellent benchmarking to determine opportunities afforded by digital, online, and mobile banking capabilities and overall “disruption” of advancing technologies. • Excellent analysis of potential branch role.	• Most assumptions are clearly explained and logical. • Strategic alternatives are somewhat explained. • Address most major issues for solving organizational problems and recommendations explained in-depth. • Strategic actions underlying the strategy are somewhat detailed. • Some benchmarking to determine opportunities afforded by digital, online, and mobile banking capabilities and overall “disruption” of advancing technologies. • Some analysis of potential branch role.	• Assumptions are not clearly explained and not logical. • Strategic alternatives are inadequately explained. • Some major issues for solving organizational problem identified, but marginally discussed and not well-explained • Strategic actions underlying the strategy inadequately detailed. • Inadequate benchmarking to determine opportunities afforded by digital, online, and mobile banking capabilities and overall “disruption” of advancing technologies • Inadequate analysis of potential branch role
Threat of imitation (10%)	• Obstacles and cost constraints for competitors to imitate the strategy are fully addressed.	• Obstacles and cost constraints for competitors to imitate the strategy are adequately addressed.	• Obstacles and cost constraints for competitors to imitate the strategy are inadequately addressed.
Writing/presenting quality and convincingness for business audience (10%)	• Excellent and abundant, accurate use of business concepts. No technical errors. • Completely clear, well-organized, appropriate word choice, logically compelling. • All referenced sources are credible and appropriate. • All exhibits referenced and relevance explained. • Basic information that the business audience would know is not rehashed. • Presentation limited to 10 minutes and all members of the team present for at least 1 minute. • All members are dressed professionally. • All presenters are enthusiastic (eye contact, no filler words, posture), use proper diction and voice, clearly present the intended content (arguments are convincing), follow a group theme and structure, respond well to questions during the Q&A, show deep understanding of the analyses, and are respectful and professional.	• Accurate and ample use of business concepts (used in a manner that accurately demonstrates their correct meaning). • Insignificant technical errors. • Mostly clear, well-organized, appropriate word choice, referenced, logically compelling. • Most referenced sources are credible and appropriate. • Most exhibits referenced and relevance explained. • Basic information that the business audience would know is very rarely rehashed. • Presentation is nearly limited to 10 minutes and most members of the team present for at last 1 minute. • Most members are dressed professionally. • Most presenters are enthusiastic (eye contact, no filler words, posture), use proper diction and voice, clearly present the intended content (arguments are convincing), follow a group theme and structure, respond well to questions during the Q&A, show deep understanding of the analyses, and are respectful and professional.	• Accurate content and sufficient use of business concepts. • Several technical errors. • Somewhat clear, well-organized, appropriate word choice, referenced, logically compelling. • Some referenced sources are credible and appropriate. • Some exhibits referenced and relevance explained. • Basic information that the business audience would know is rarely rehashed. • The presentation exceeds 10 minutes and few members of the team present for at least 1 minute • Most members are not dressed professionally. • Presenters are inadequately: enthusiastic (eye contact, no filler words, posture), use proper diction and voice, present the intended content (arguments are convincing), follow a group theme and structure, respond to questions during the Q&A, show understanding of the analyses, and are inadequately respectful and professional.

Challenge 3: Faculty Workload and Limited Resources

Faculty already had a heavy workload with limited resources to implement the competition. They expressed time management concerns about the changing curriculum, competition expectations, a 3:3 teaching load, new course preparations, and new off-campus location teaching assignments. They feared the more time they allocated to the competition, the less time to teach course material, which would negatively affect student learning. There would be additional time demands for case development meetings with executives and in student coaching. A public information session was added for students to ask questions of executives. The final competition increased student enthusiasm and positive public relations for the partner company. However, these events required significant time for logistical planning (e.g., room scheduling, parking, video recording, and marketing).

Responses to faculty workload and limited resources

Our Dean responded by taking responsibility to find the partner business, with help from the college’s advisory board, which increased faculty support and enthusiasm. Faculty in other departments helped students with finance, accounting, and marketing aspects of the case. Yet a key to the resolution was for strategic management faculty to meet to understand how workload among faculty varied. Our faculty-driven process had to consider how the impact on course faculty varied too.

Challenge 4: Politics: Promotion, Tenure, Review, and Merit (PTRM) Evaluation

Strategic management course faculty (tenured, tenure-track, and adjunct instructors) negotiated politics carefully and provided feedback about student learning effectiveness, resource limitations, increased workload, and autonomy concerns. Annual faculty performance reviews by PTRM committees consider teaching, scholarship, and service contributions. As the signature capstone experience for all business undergraduates, this high-profile live case competition pressured faculty. Some faculty believed the competition was forced on them and were concerned that if administration became too involved in pedagogy, decisions would not consider their course expertise and student learning classroom experiences.

When faculty’s section teams do well (or poorly) in the competition, they may find their status and PTRM evaluation affected. Tenure-track faculty must also produce research within time-sensitive tenure deadlines. They were concerned the extra work would not be evaluated as a major teaching contribution and would significantly reduce their research time. Students’ negative competition perceptions would affect teaching evaluations. They may blame the faculty member for issues although a single faculty member had limited decision-making control.

Responses to faculty politics and evaluation concerns

The department PTRM committee acknowledged that it was not clear how (or if) case competition work would be recognized in faculty evaluations, and consequently in tenure review. Because a faculty-driven process created the case competition, they determined that faculty did have the power to decide how to assess faculty efforts in their PTRM evaluations. After extensive discussions, faculty and administrators finally agreed about the significant nature and scope of the burden involved in teaching this course. However, a formal process to ensure recognition of faculty efforts has not yet been integrated into PTRM considerations and is still being discussed.

The impact on faculty politics was influenced by how the administration, department leadership, and faculty promoted the case competition. The department chair promoted the competition’s success with the department and administration. The Dean recognized the competition’s success in all-faculty college meetings and communications. The case faculty understood their work would be recognized as service, although service had the least impact in PTRM evaluations. The SMCC faculty task force won the university’s Innovation in Teaching Award, which bolstered teaching recognition in PTRM evaluations. Furthermore, publishing academic manuscripts about the case competition would allow faculty to include case competition work as a “research contribution” for evaluations.

In response to time concerns, the competition structure was made less time intensive. One of the strategy faculty became SMCC coordinator and was given a course release for competition management. Other strategy faculty had to accept added responsibilities: learning new case content each semester; presenting the case to their section(s); evaluating and selecting section champions for the finalist competition; and, participating in SMCC Task Force meetings.

Student Stakeholder Tensions: Motivation, Time Constraints, and Incentives

Approximately 300 to 350 students, across 9 to 12 sections of 25 to 35 students each, participated in the live case each semester. Because students received faculty, administration, and executives’ support throughout the process, they valued the case experience’s learning objectives (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010). Located near a diverse urban city, our public university has over 22,000 students (approximately 19,000 undergraduate). With strong inclusion values, we continuously adapt to meet highly diverse student needs in ethnicity, international status, LGBTQ+, and disability. “The fall 2017 incoming class of almost 6,000 new students is the largest in TU’s history, one of the most academically prepared, and the most diverse ever, with more than 46 percent identifying as a racial minority and 24 percent as African American.” (Schatzel, 2017, p. 8). Classified as Carnegie M1, our university draws from the top 30% of high school graduates. With over 3,400 undergraduate students, the business college has approximately 60% Caucasian and 60% male students. Most students are employed and averaged working 22 hours per week. When revising the competition, faculty shared student concerns discussed in postcase reflection papers, feedback sessions, and surveys, as well as those observed throughout the semester. In this section, we describe students’ concerns: motivation, time, and incentives.

Challenge 5: Student Motivation and Incentives

Some faculty assumed competitions motivate students to improve work quality; however, motivation and learning styles affect student learning and performance differently (Miner, 2003). Competitive learning styles are congruent with competition course formats, while participative learning styles are congruent with noncompetitive academic courses (Grasha, 1996). Student motivation needs differed: power need for influence, affiliation need for positive peer-based relationships, and achievement need for high-quality performance outcomes (McClelland, 1985). Through student reflection papers, we learned that our competition motivated students with high power needs to win but may have demotivated some with high affiliation needs. Competitive learning processes created pressure. Although challenging team-based competitions motivate students with high-achievement needs to perform better (McClelland, 1987), we learned competitions increased student stress. They must depend on other students with different achievement goals. Some students’ motivation decreased when faculty inconsistently presented case information, thus threatening their success.

Responses to student motivation and incentive concerns

In response, we increased team accountability by developing student-developed peer accountability measures and grade incentivizes to reward quality team performance. Furthermore, we created a process to effectively address individual finalists, who were concerned about participating in the final competition.

First, faculty collaborated with students and implemented three student-developed team accountability mechanisms: a peer evaluation form as a performance contract, a project planning guide, and an individual-team reflective paper. At the beginning of the competition period, teams submitted a student-developed performance contract (based on a peer evaluation template) in which they developed their own team-specific interpersonal behavioral standards for a high-quality team project. For example, one professor required a team revise their broad, unclear “communicated with team” behavioral expectation item on the form. They revised with a more specific “responded to other team members within 24 hours by e-mail.” This student developed performance contract was not required by all and other faculty provided the peer evaluation forms. For the project planning guide, students created goal-based timelines, tasks, team member responsibilities, and completion dates. For the team-based reflective paper, students assessed their individual and team performance (e.g., strengths, weaknesses, what was learned). Furthermore, we created a shared online course site and information session for students to equally access company information and interact with executives.

Second, we revised our grading rubric to increase motivation. Students were motivated to work hard because they wanted a high grade for this heavily weighted project. Although faculty differed in how to weigh the project, ranging from 15% (requiring 2 weeks class time) to 30% (4 weeks), they decided on 25% of the final course grade. Bonus points incentivized high-quality student work and motivated section winning teams to participate in the finals. While section winning teams earned 5% additional course points, the Top 3 finalist teams earned an additional 5%, 3%, or 2% (1st, 2nd, 3rd places, respectively). Thus, the overall competition winning team earned an additional 10%, which increased their course grade by one full letter. In one case, the potential to earn these bonus points motivated one student failing the course to improve significantly. When her team won the overall college competition, she not only passed the course but also found employers wanted to discuss her winning project in her job interviews.

Third, we cannot force participation in the final presentation with executives. Finalists who choose not to participate forfeit their additional 5% bonus points. In our experience, few student finalists chose not to participate. In another case, a student argued against providing “free company labor.” When some faculty suggested companies provide financial incentives to winning teams, the Dean shared her concerns. Requiring business partners to provide financial rewards could negatively impact recruiting new companies for the competition. Over the years, most student finalists described it as a highly rewarding, memorable experience.

Challenge 6: Student Time Constraints

Many of our students worked full-time and, as seniors, were transitioning to new careers. They expressed stress about the time needed to complete the case effectively and had pressure from assignments in other courses and exams.

Responses to student time constraints

Faculty responded to students’ time constraints by revising their course schedule and lesson plans. Faculty needed time to teach strategic management concepts that students used in the case. They streamlined course content, adjusted other assignments, proactively communicated deadlines, and allocated in-class time for student team meetings. Students reported these changes helped their teams.

Challenge 7: Low-Quality Student Engagement

The SMCC Task Force observed that students were not as engaged as anticipated during our first competitions, which reduced tangible benefits for our partner company. Finalist student teams explained that participating in the finals required additional work. Nonfinalist students participated less after the information session as it no longer affected their grade and was not useful for career networking. The first partner company appeared to reap little positive public relations from the competition and did not pursue further connections to the competition.

Response to low-quality student engagement

In response to low student enthusiasm and executives’ need for positive press, we increased networking and incentives during the information session, final competition, and recognition ceremony. We obtained funds from corporate sponsors for refreshments, awards, and job opportunities to competition winners. In some semesters, the partner company offered financial awards and employment opportunities to winning students. Each year, as the events’ caliber and prestige grew, enthusiasm for the competition has increased. The broader community has engaged more via social media. Our recent recognition ceremony was streamed live and generated nearly 1000 online views.

Executive Stakeholder Tensions: Aligning Learning Objectives With Company Interests

Our business school values experiential learning through long-term company partnerships. The case competition built on our past traditions with business partnerships in volunteer learning-based competitions. These experiences strengthened relationships between local executives and the administration and provided evidence of students’ interest in working with businesses in competitions about real-world business challenges. Additionally, all undergraduate students must complete a degree-required internship course with local businesses.

The core values of our corporate partner executives impact their strategic decisions (Filatotchev & Nakajima, 2014; Krause, Filatotchev, & Bruton, 2016); therefore, choosing our partner firm effectively affected our students’ experience. Partner executives, some of whom were our college alumni, committed significant time to case development and events. Executives developed case topics, provided information, and responded to student questions; they valued high-quality, creative student recommendations from strategic analyses. Faculty have respected their time by providing valuable case outcomes. Winning presentations tended to be innovative, practical, and time and cost-efficient. Executives reported positive experiences—specifically impressed with student performance quality and have wanted to participate again.

Challenge 8: Aligning Learning Experience to Partner Company’s Interests

The case competition reflected executive decision-making realities. Industry changes happen quickly; the case could change as executives’ perspective changed during the semester, which affected final judging, the information session and the finals. Unfortunately, because of changing priorities, companies unexpectedly increased or decreased the number of executives judging final presentations. These changes have introduced uncertainty into the finalist judging process. Although this messiness was valuable to student learning, the case was time-limited to 4 weeks and 25% of the course grade; changes to the case’s focus changed faculty instruction, student analyses, and team processes, and caused stress and anxiety for faculty and students.

We experienced a disconnect between winning criteria faculty used in section competitions and criteria executives used in the finals. Executives tended to focus on items the students presented that were relevant to their company’s current business situation as opposed to the completeness of the team’s research and work. These differences among executives and faculty provided students a real-world complexity associated with strategic leadership decision-making, but unfortunately, students also perceived inequity in evaluation processes at times.

Response to align the learning experience to the partner company’s interests

By involving executives in writing the case, we ensured they understood our student learning objectives. Often, our business partners have been led by college alumni who are familiar with our organizational culture. Our SMCC coordinator worked closely with the company executives and aligned the competition format to the executives’ wishes for public relations.

Executive judges were given evaluation sheets to focus their attention on strategic management criteria that were aligned with the grading rubric. These evaluation sheets evolved to include more criteria (e.g., budgets and solution originality) desired by the executives. A creative, high-potential idea could be very compelling in a competition format and faculty shared this insight with students. Although faculty required an additional research-based written analysis in their sections, we respected executives’ time by not requiring a written paper for executives during the finals. Although we anticipated executives would become less interested because of time demands, this did not occur. Rather, executives’ feedback indicated their motivation to participate increased because of positive media exposure, high-quality analyses for their current business problems, and direct access to student talent.

Instructional Change in Action: Tensions Resolved Through the Six-Step Collaborative Process

Our process was collaboratively developed with stakeholders to effectively manage stakeholder tensions as they arise and change. The competition significantly changed not only how strategic management was taught but also how the college and community collaborated to effectively resolve challenges from this large-scale instructional change. In this section, we discuss our adaptable, collaborative six-step process, specifically (a) based in distributed leadership and information-sharing elements and (b) key questions addressed (see Table 2).

Collaborative Elements: Distributed Leadership and Information Sharing

We adopted a “learning by doing” approach in the early development of the live case assignment. This approach was needed as stakeholder needs change frequently, even while the competition was in process, and thus, we needed a collaborative process that was adaptable. We shall review this process, which displays distributed leadership though shared governance, and information sharing from transparent communication systems.

Distributed Leadership

The faculty SMCC Task Force led by the team’s coordinator was empowered to implement the live case and make changes as needed (Orlikowski, 1996). Establishing consensus about the assignment structure, purpose, and process was important to minimize conflict. Based in distributed leadership (Jones et al., 2012), our collaborative process allowed us to implement instructional change that met needs specific to our institutional processes and academic culture (e.g., faculty autonomy and values). A “bottom-up” approach was used (e.g., faculty-driven implementation process) with collaborative team-based relationships.

Using a distributed leadership structure, characterized by “collective, context-specific processes and practices of organizational actors whose roles may be fuzzy, fluid, and constantly changing” (Vuori, 2019, p. 224), we involved stakeholders in decision making. This structure helped us minimize conflicts that may occur during instructional change efforts when faculty autonomy conflicts with administrative hierarchical decision-making processes (Jones & Harvey, 2017; Jones et al., 2012). With decision-making authority, our stakeholders negotiated how to share resources they controlled, while also benefiting from others’ resources (Greer & Bendersky, 2013). Changes were made quickly to optimize student learning outcomes. When facing conflicting expectations, faculty, administrators, and executives negotiated to respond strategically to changing needs (Oliver, 1991). For example, we balanced faculty and students needs to have grading criteria in advance with executive needs for quality recommendations. Faculty worked early with executives to develop a rubric that incorporated their vision. Thus, the final grading rubric was ready for students when the competition launched.

Information Sharing

Through collaboration stakeholders understand each other’s needs by sharing information about institutional pressures, limited resources, and organizational goals (Hibbert, Siedlok, & Beech, 2016; Huxham & Vangen, 2000). In joint meetings with stakeholders (e.g., executives and administrators), the SMCC Task Force gathered information about their various needs prior to making decisions. We learned that exchanging information through communication systems accessible to all stakeholders was critical to minimize potential misperceptions common with large-scale change efforts. For example, our system standardized case information to ensure fairness through a common online course site with case information, grading rubric, timeline, research tools, and a student-executive discussion board. Key information was shared liberally regarding AACSB standards, faculty-preferred teaching methods, and executive’s needs. This transparent information-sharing and shared decision-making approach helped faculty, administrators, and executives shape the competition to achieve goals and maximize buy-in (Dee & Leisyte, 2017). In the next section, we explain how these two elements, distributed leadership and information sharing, influenced our six steps.

Our Story of Managing Tensions: Six-Step Live Case Competition Collaborative Process

Our creation of a live case competition involved a collaborative process that managed stakeholder tensions and can help those undertaking large-scale instructional change because collaboration helps with adaptation as institutional contexts change. Our university changed over the past 4 years with a new university president, revised business college strategic vision, and curriculum changes. Administration, faculty, and students’ expectations changed. However, our collaborative process allowed us to adapt quickly to unexpected changes because of the open exchange of information and shared leadership decision-making. Consequently, we could revise our competition’s infrastructure (e.g., assignment and company data needed) concurrently as our institutional context changed with minimal disruption to the competition in progress.

Distributed leadership and information sharing allowed us to identify and understand when tensions arose when key stakeholder voices (e.g., faculty and students) were not being heard. Through these six steps, we collaboratively considered needs, identified needed resources, problem-solved issues, and then negotiated to benefit each other. For example, when students had a specific company question, executives provided data to the SMCC coordinator, who then distributed it to all stakeholders via the shared online site. Students received valued information, faculty experienced less student frustration, and the executives received higher quality student analyses. In this section, we describe how our collaborative process managed stakeholder challenges, changing environmental needs, and potential institutional obstacles (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Collaborative process to develop and implement strategic management live case competitions.

Step 1. What Is the Case Competition Purpose and What Should It Include?

It was a challenge to effectively coordinate a team of creative and independently minded faculty, administrators, students, and executives to develop a curricular-based competition. We benefitted by the use of evidence-based management (EBMgt) to theoretically integrate AACSB standards with course learning objectives. Our process resulted in faculty who were team-oriented, resource-efficient, and committed to successful experiential learning. Building our competition infrastructure on EBMgt principles, we had common stakeholder goals and clear roles for: (a) the case competition purpose, (b) writing/selecting cases, (c) judging/evaluation rubric, (d) competition sequencing, and (e) competition preparation (training/performance feedback; Gamble & Jelley, 2014).

Step 2: Who Finds the Company for the Case? Who Writes the Case?

Through her network, the Dean found companies that not only valued experiential learning and student interaction but also were willing to provide a business challenge and devote time/resources. Following the trial semester (Year 1: 2014-2015), the Dean and faculty agreed that it would be best to have one partner business for the academic year. For a partner company, there was a significant learning curve in choosing the strategy topic and providing relevant company data. Our partners included¹ (a) Year 2 (2015-2016) Blue Bank,² a regional bank with local branches; (b) Year 3 (2016-2017), Best Service that produces corporate facility products and services; and, (c) Year 4 (2017-2018), Green Bank, a second regional bank. After an initial faculty and executives’ discussion about common goals, the Dean delegated liaison responsibility to the Management Department Chairperson, who then delegated decision-making authority to the SMCC Coordinator.

Writing the case

Although the process of writing the case each semester was challenging, our collaborative process allowed us to meet unexpected changes that occurred. We had to write the case to align the company’s priorities and context (e.g., marketing, competitors, and customer demographics) with the strategic management course content (e.g., environmental analysis, resource-based view, and value chain analyses). Furthermore, we had to provide students with company and industry information that helped them understand the central company problem, goals, and resources within its specific competitive context (Sherwood, 2004). We learned during the first competition that the case problem statement needed to be finalized early for faculty to integrate relevant content in syllabi before the semester began and unanticipated problems occurred. In one case, the lead executive worked extensively with faculty to write the case but left the company after the competition began. New executives took over and had different goals. In another example, a company presented marketing-related problems not aligned with strategy concepts. In moving forward, we created a new company recruitment process that required a strategic management-focused case.

Step 3. Who Needs to Be Involved in Competition Logistics?

The competition required significant coordination and logistics to use resources effectively, minimize faculty burden, and ensure a high-quality student experience. Facilitated by the SMCC Coordinator, our cross-functional team shared knowledge openly to identify and understand changing needs, potential obstacles and new resources (Hibbert, Huxham, Sydow, & Lerch, 2010; Hibbert et al., 2016; Huxham & Vangen, 2005). We created roles, responsibilities, and transparent communication systems that brought together faculty, administration, library staff, technology services, public relations staff, and company executives in a long-term partnership (Table 4; Huxham & Vangen, 2000).

Table 4.

Coordinating Team: Roles and Responsibilities.

Stakeholder	Team member	Roles and responsibilities
Faculty	SMCC coordinator	• Coordinate case writing, competition timeline, logistics, marketing/media of competition events (information session; final presentation to executive judges) • Finalize case problem statement prior to semester • Administer BlackBoard case competition website • Communication liaison among executives, dean, faculty, and students • Facilitate information session
Faculty	Strategic management course faculty	• Integrate live case into strategic management capstone course • Develop case problem statement with company executives and faculty • Develop case assignment requirements • Develop evaluation criteria to analyze student analyses and presentations; relay student feedback • Select course section competition winner
Executives	Company executives	• Liaison with SMCC coordinator • Provide company information related to case • Provide incentives (e.g., internship possibilities) • Develop case problem statement with and faculty • Respond to student questions • Participate in case information “town hall” session • Judge finalist case competition
Administration	Business research librarian	• Develop library resource support materials for students to conduct firm and industry analyses (e.g., company documents, industry and market data, related research databases and news)
	Dean and Dean’s office administration	• Find company for the competition • Liaison with faculty SMCC coordinator and strategy faculty • Provide financial support
	Management department administrative assistant	• Prepare materials for information session and finals events • Reserve facilities and order refreshments for events
	Public relations staff (college and university)	• Prepare and distribute competition marketing materials • Prepare press releases about events and winning teams
	Technology staff	• Coordinate audiovisual recordings of events • Provide media links and files to faculty SMCC coordinator and college public relations staff for marketing and for Blackboard competition site

Note. SMCC = Strategic Management Case Competition.

Step 4: What Mechanisms Will Be Employed to Link the Different Stakeholders?

Conflict is inevitable when collaborating with different organizational units (Gherardi & Nicolini, 2002) and sharing resources (Eisenhardt & Schoonhaven, 1996). Through formal communication mechanisms among collaborating partners, we minimized misperceptions and time inefficiencies, increased student work quality and adapted to different course formats. We found faculty and student engagement increased from communication processes that shared valued information quickly. Open to all stakeholders, the case’s online site was managed by the SMCC coordinator, who updated it with case instructions, grading rubric, evaluation criteria, library resources, executive responses to the student discussion board, case background video, company information, past winning presentation videos, announcements, and marketing materials.

Step 5: How Do We Implement the Case Competition and Respect Faculty Autonomy?

We intentionally created a timeline that increased faculty flexibility with different course formats and styles. The case competition timeline for a traditional 15-week strategic management course was as follows: (a) Week 4: Case assigned to students via BlackBoard site, (b) Week 11: Course section semifinalist identified, and (c) Week 13: Section finalists’ presentations to executives. In this way, our competition valued faculty autonomy with a process that balanced the need for fairness and consistency across sections with faculty academic freedom and independence.

Step

6: How Do We Ensure That the Case Competition Contributes to Student Learning and Reflects Continuous Improvement?

We collected information to evaluate our decisions and revised our processes for continued success with experiential learning (Miller, 2017). At the end of the semester, in line with EBMgt, we collected stakeholders’ feedback to evaluate and continuously improve the competition and our collaborative process (Briner, Denyer, & Rousseau, 2009; Gamble & Jelley, 2014; Miller, 2017; Rousseau, 2012). The SMCC coordinator summarized feedback from executives, administrators, and faculty. The SMCC Task Force assessed student learning outcomes from student surveys and reflection papers. Our data analysis indicated the case competition had a positive impact.³ The task force evaluation was used to refine and identify improvements for the next competition.

Outcome: Long-Term Student-Centered Business Partnerships

Our college has strengthened our within-campus and business partner networks that benefit stakeholders. Companies have offered employment/internship opportunities to students to implement their winning proposals. Yet, based on their unique institutional contexts, other business schools need to ask if similar live case competitions are worth the cost. In competitions, an element of motivation is to win, which in our experience worked for some students, but not all. However, winning was not essential to student learning. The strategic case competition has been an effective experiential learning opportunity because it illustrated the key strategic management concept of competitive advantage, specifically why one firm outperforms another firm (Lewis, 2011). We learned from our student reflective papers that they learned leadership skills as they witnessed why one team outperformed another team. Lower performing teams then understood why they were outperformed, which helped them in their career development.

Advantages, Limitations, and Future Research

Our development and implementation of the live case competition provided several advantages. We had several years of information to explain what we learned and what went into this instructional change. Our article reviewed insights gained in reflecting on our experience in making the live case a signature student experience. We had strong administration support and did not have to “sell the idea,” which benefited us due to the significant resources needed. Our university valued teaching and was undergraduate focused, which lent encouragement to dedicate significant resources to implement this experiential learning opportunity.

Limitations exist that are related to these advantages. First, limits of our case study methodology included a lack of generalizability as universities/colleges may vary significantly from our institution. Faculty and administration at a research focused university may not see benefits in dedicating time for an undergraduate course competition. Smaller colleges may lack resources to manage the competition. Universities in very rural areas may experience challenges in finding business partners each year. Second, our instructional change experience indicated that information sharing and distributed leadership were essential; however, these factors applied to our organization. Changes like this are contextual. Power differences, resources, and faculty autonomy could influence how distributed leadership impacts outcomes (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1974; Van Ameijde, Nelson, Billsberry, & Van Meurs, 2009).

Finally, we continue to consider how to improve student involvement in key decisions. Because seniors compete, they were not available after graduation when the next competition decisions were made. Yet we continue experimenting with different ways. For example, when a student’s father passed away, she adamantly wanted to help the competition to honor her father. In collaboration with her professor, she developed her final assignment. She observed every finalist presentation and presented feedback (e.g., questions and comments), perceptions of fairness in grading, time required, inconsistency in directions, and student work quality. Our current grading rubric was a direct outcome of her feedback.

Future research can consider extending our collaborative process. In this competitive world, business schools question how to create unique experiential learning opportunities? Although accreditation pressures lead universities to adopt changes by similar accredited institutions for legitimation (Aldrich, 1999), innovation occurs because of different internal organization processes within that change context (Knudsen, 2008, Rutherford, Parks, Cavazos, & White, 2012; Schilke, 2018). When AACSB requires new instructional knowledge, skills, or processes, one school’s instructional change spreads through our field from pedagogical research publications, professional presentations, and doctoral preparation programs. Consequently, that instructional method that was distinctly unique becomes standard (e.g., a traditional written case study became a common instructional method) and eventually no longer innovative. How can this collaborative process extend to innovative instructional change outcomes?

Conclusion

Facilitating large-scale instructional change required managing stakeholder needs with mutual respect, an open-mind, and a collaborative eye to develop impactful student-centered learning experiences. Our collaborative model provides a guiding framework within which to assess institutional pressures and manage stakeholder tensions effectively. Motivated by AACSB calls for more experiential work on the classroom, we developed and implemented our signature live case competition for undergraduate business students. As we shared, our road was characterized not only by assessing potential potholes but also by building new bridges. As a result, we developed a flexible, collaborative six-step process that allowed us to continuously improve and adapt as our institutional context changed.

The case competition has become a hallmark of our college and legitimizes both the management department and college’s status within the university and business communities. Faculty were recognized by the university’s prestigious teaching innovation award for the case competition as it offered a real-world, interdisciplinary, dynamic student learning opportunity. We described our motivation for change, stakeholder challenges, and solutions. In this honest and heartfelt testimony, we shared how we brought students, faculty, administrators, and companies together in mutually beneficial ways for positive student learning. We hope others benefit from our experience in problem-solving stakeholder tensions. Through distributed leadership team-based structures, information-sharing approaches, and shared-governance processes, our collaborative process valued different stakeholder needs with students at the center.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the feedback from the 2017 Eastern Academy of Management Conference in Baltimore, MD, reviewers on a previous version of this article. We are very grateful for the helpful feedback from Kathy Lund-Dean, John Cullen, Judy Harris, Alexa Kowsowska, our strategic management faculty, and the anonymous reviewers from the Journal of Management Education. Their insight has significantly enhanced the quality of our article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Mariana J. Lebrón

Notes

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