Case studies prepared by the faculty of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore in 2012-13 are being studied across various top-notch universities and firms in the country and across the globe.

As part of a three-year contract, the IIMB signed an agreement with the Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), a subsidiary of Harvard University, in 2011 by which the latter would use its wide reach to distribute case studies prepared by the IIMB.  

As many as 24 case studies were submitted for the year 2012-13 and these have been picked up by 120 universities and a number of business firms in 40 countries.

“All the case studies are based on the Indian context. The most popular among the 2012-13 batch is, for example, the one titled ‘Bosch Group in India: Transition to a Transnational Organisation’.

Already 1,170 copies of this case study have been purchased,” said Dr Dinesh Kumar, chairperson, Research and Publication. The second most popular is a case study titled ‘Supply Chain Optimisation at Madurai Aavin Milk Dairy’, which has already over 500 copies.

The list of countries and universities who have availed of these case studies, a copy of which is with Deccan Herald, is wide and varied. They include institutions in countries such as the Bahamas, Kenya, Colombia and Jordan, Switzerland, the UK and France.

As far as universities are concerned, majority of them are from the USA. Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Yale University, Boston University are some of the better known names on the list.

Cambridge University, Stockholm School of Business, the University of Technology, Sydney, represent institutions from other countries. In India, these case studies have been used by a number of IIMs themselves namely Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Indore, Lucknow and IIT Madras among others.

The case studies, it seems, are popular not only with the academia, but also with business firms, as a number of them such as Merck and Co Inc, the Boston Consulting Group, International Inc, T-Systems, Frankfurt have been shown to have availed these case studies.

When the contract was first signed, only seven such studies were submitted in the first year. According to the contract, the requirement, however, is 24 submissions per year. “From the first year when we entered into the contract, the faculty has shown keen interest in this effort.

“The better visibility in the second year as against the first year has also increased the popularity of such case studies,” said Dr Dinesh Kumar.

Other institutes that have entered into a similar agreement with HBP are the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Kellogg Graduate School of Management and the Darden School of Business.