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The HRD profession is witnessing a revolution in its philosophy, programmes and methods. Training methods used in management education and training are either traditional, such as lectures, or modern, such as role playing or case methods. Lectures are only a method of transferring knowledge to adult learners. Modern training methods help adult learners to build their skills and develop their attitudes.

Given today’s pressing societal challenges, business schools are increasingly expected to incorporate sustainability in their curricula. Yet, while research on corporate sustainability is on the rise, there is less innovation in teaching methods as most institutions rely on traditional methods to teach sustainability in the classroom. This paper aims to present the case-based debate as an appropriate teaching method for exposing students to the complexity of business sustainability issues.

The pedagogical background of the traditional case method and the debate method have been analyzed to provide an integrated understanding of the benefits of combining the two in the case-based debate. Building on the authors’ experiences from using case-based debates in the classroom, the paper describes what a case-debate is and how it can be implemented.

The paper offers a practical tool that can be used to teach sustainability in business schools and other educational institutions. Case-based debates can elicit active participation, support the development of students’ critical thinking skills and improve reflexivity by compelling students to seriously and actively engage with opposing viewpoints on a given issue.

This paper presents a hybrid approach for sustainability teaching that combines the benefits of the traditional case method with those of an in-class debate. The case-based debate method has received little attention in educational research and business sustainability teaching practice but can serve multiple teaching objectives relevant to sustainability teaching.

The purpose of this paper is to see how educational philosophies that underlie lecture and case methods of teaching are related to setting course goals, objectives, and contents.

This paper is based on the premise that foundational philosophies, worldviews, or paradigms underlie educational philosophies, and each educational philosophy favors a certain instructional methodology, which in turn implies a certain way or method of instruction.

The findings of this paper are that each educational philosophy favors a certain instructional methodology, which in turn determines not only the way that the instruction is performed but also how course goals, objectives, and contents are set.

This paper implies that differences between the underlying world views of lecture and case methods of teaching similarly lead to differences in many other aspects of the teaching and learning process.

This paper implies that in practice, faculty would set their course goals, objectives, and contents in a more consistent manner if they become consciously aware of the underlying philosophy of their teaching method.

The original contribution of this paper is that it shows how in a systematic manner the differences in teaching philosophy lead to differences in what faculty would do in all areas of their course activities: goals, objectives, and contents.

The purposes of this study were (1) to explore empirical challenges in dimensioning safety buffers and their implications and (2) to organise those challenges into a framework.

In a multiple-case study following an exploratory, qualitative and empirical approach, 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted in six cases. Representatives of all cases subsequently participated in an interactive workshop, after which a questionnaire was used to assess the impact and presence of each challenge. A cross-case analysis was performed to situate empirical findings within the literature.

Ten challenges were identified in four areas of dimensioning safety buffers: decision management, responsibilities, methods for dimensioning safety buffers and input data. All challenges had both direct and indirect negative implications for dimensioning safety buffers and were synthesised into a framework.

This study complements the literature on dimensioning safety buffers with qualitative insights into challenges in dimensioning safety buffers and implications in practice.

Practitioners can use the framework to understand and overcome challenges in dimensioning safety buffers and their negative implications.

This study responds to the scarcity of qualitative and empirical studies on dimensioning safety buffers and the absence of any overview of the challenges therein.

Reports the results of a survey of UK lecturers involved in teaching strategic management to postgraduate and post‐experience students. Identifies the lecturer’s objectives in using case studies and evaluates the effectiveness of the case method in achieving those objectives. Finds that the method is successful in achieving participation and in developing communication and interpersonal skills, but less successful in the development of strategic analysis. Finds that a wide range of other methods are used in the teaching of strategic management, and that these methods can be used partly to replace and also to complement the use of case.

Case-based classroom teaching-learning process (hereafter, case method) has provided a very productive teaching-learning environment for a long time. In the case method, students are expected to meet some prerequisites, such as reading and analyzing the case in advance, listening to the classroom discussion and actively participating in the discussion. However, it is frequently reported in Indian business schools that students do not prepare the assigned case before the scheduled class. The under-preparation of cases results in low-quality discussion, high absenteeism, passive attitude and lack of energy.

This study modeled the case method using an IGEO (input-guide-enablers-output, commonly used in any process modeling) framework to identify challenges in the case-based classroom teaching-learning process. A novel customized classroom teaching-learning process called the EPDE (explain, practice, discuss, explore) method replaced the case method. These two teaching-learning processes were used for teaching two groups of MBA students.

The novel EPDE method effectively addressed the case method challenges. It resulted in better learning outcomes in the Indian B-school context.

The purpose of the study is to examine the impact of an alternative to the traditional case study method in a college classroom among MBA students. Two points make this study original and unique: (1) The IGOE process modeling framework is used to model teaching-learning processes, such as the case and EPDE methods. Using IGOE for teaching-learning processes is unique and is not available in the literature and (2) the EPDE method is a novel concept.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of numerical boundary condition implementation on local error and convergence in L2-norm of a finite volume discretization of the transient heat conduction equation subject to several boundary conditions, and for cases with volumetric heat generation, using both fully implicit and Crank-Nicolson time discretizations. The goal is to determine which combination of numerical boundary condition implementation and time discretization produces the most accurate solutions with the least computational effort.

The paper studies several benchmark cases including constant temperature, convective heating, constant heat flux, time-varying heat flux, and volumetric heating, and compares the convergence rates and local to analytical or semi-analytical solutions.

The Crank-Nicolson method coupled with second-order expression for the boundary derivatives produces the most accurate solutions on the coarsest meshes with the least computation times. The Crank-Nicolson method allows up to 16X larger time step for similar accuracy, with nearly negligible additional computational effort compared with the implicit method.

The findings can be used by researchers writing similar codes for quantitative guidance concerning the effect of various numerical boundary condition approximations for a large class of boundary condition types for two common time discretization methods.

The paper provides a comprehensive study of accuracy and convergence of the finite volume discretization for a wide range of benchmark cases and common time discretization methods.

To see how educational philosophies that underlie lecture and case methods of teaching are related to how faculty perform their teaching, research, and service.

This paper is based on the premise that foundational philosophies, worldviews or paradigms underlie educational philosophies, and each educational philosophy favors a certain instructional methodology, which in turn implies a certain way or method of instruction.

The findings of this paper are that each educational philosophy favors a certain instructional methodology, which in turn determines not only the way that the instruction is performed but also how faculty perform their teaching, research, and service.

This paper implies that differences between the underlying world views of lecture and case methods of teaching similarly lead to differences in many other aspects of the teaching and learning process.

This paper implies that, in practice, faculty would perform their teaching, research, and service in a more consistent manner if they become consciously aware of the underlying philosophy of their teaching method.

The original contribution of this paper is that it shows how in a systematic manner the differences in teaching philosophy lead to differences in what faculty do in all areas of their activities: teaching, research, and service.

The purpose of this paper is to review the use of case method in entrepreneurship research, and to identify trends in its current application. A key objective of the paper is to lay the foundation for a future research agenda by critically reviewing relevant literatures and offering insights into the use of case method in particular settings. The paper also helps identify areas where case method could add value to research findings in future scholarship.

Using a Boolean search, a systematic literature review (SLR) was undertaken across the “big five” entrepreneurship journals in the five-year period between 2008 and 2012. The search initially yielded a total of 269 “hits”. Following exclusion criteria, the list was refined to a total of 52 empirical papers, and these were reviewed using a comprehensive reading guide developed by the authors.

The paper finds that relatively few articles published in the “big five” entrepreneurship journals use case method, despite repeated calls in the literature for more in-depth, qualitative approaches. This potentially suggests that case method is not fully accepted as a legitimate or sufficiently rigorous approach in the upper echelons of contemporary published entrepreneurship scholarship. Overall the paper argues for greater acceptance of the use of case method amongst the academic community, alongside greater confidence in its application. This can be achieved by learning from other disciplines where the case approach is more established.

While a comprehensive SLR was undertaken, the search was restricted to a limited time period and across a limited number of top tier journals.

The paper highlights incidents where case method has been used successfully, identifies gaps in the literature and contributes towards setting a future research agenda that should be of particular value to qualitative researchers.

The paper builds on extant literatures by furthering our understanding of the use of case method in entrepreneurship research. It should be of value to qualitative scholars applying case method in their empirical work, as well as those seeking to extend their methodological reach beyond a purely quantitative orientation.

The purpose of this paper is to close the gap between theoretical approaches to strategic operations auditing and empirical analysis of practice in service organisations. Through analysis of the two different views of strategy formulation – environment‐market and resource‐based – the paper aims to provide insights on how strategic operations audit methods are being used and under what circumstances.

The case study methodology was employed which involved a three‐stage data collection and analytical process. Its purpose was to identify how strategic operations audit methods were being used, why they were used and the particular circumstances of their use. Trails of operational improvement within each of six case studies show links between service operational activities, the benefits achieved by the improvements and the formulation and/or execution of each service company's business strategy. These trails of improvement provided a means by which to reveal some of the strategic operations audit methods being used. In addition, interviews and analysis of supporting documentation ensured the complete set of methods being utilised was identified.

The results indicate three main findings. First it is recognised that the service companies all look to adopt a top down approach to strategic operations auditing and seek to maintain, and where possible, gain greater strategic impact from their service operations. Second, the competitive state of the business impacts the choice of strategic operations audit method used. All companies studied employed an environment‐market method to assess operations – market fit. Only when a company is confident of its competitive position will managers then look to also devise a resource‐based method in order to assess its current ability to nurture new capabilities to exploit. Third, companies use a variety of integration techniques to verify on‐going cohesion across infrastructural decision‐making categories of the content of service operations strategy. The assessment of cohesion within service operations strategy takes place within subsets of the content of the strategy. The authors did not find integration techniques that hone structural decision categories or service operations strategy as a whole. The results also show that methods used by managers are pale imitations of the rigorous procedures originally devised by researchers.

Service operations managers possess inadequate understanding of how the application of a strategic operations audit method should be made and limited ability to undertake the audit in a structured and meaningful way. A strategic operations audit methods selection process is put forward to remedy this. The process acknowledges that the choice of a particular method is contingent on the stage of development of the company's service operations strategy. It guides managers through the decision‐making process of what strategic operations audit method to use and when managers should be using it. The message for academics is that new resource‐based methods need to be created that are accessible to managers and relevant when service operations strategy has successfully evolved to the point where greater influence is being sought from it in the formulation of business strategy.

An empirical study within service operations management of the practice of strategic operations auditing is rare. The paper's findings begin to address the gap between theory and practice. The paper presents revisions and additions to the operations manager's tool kit of strategic operations audit methods and culminates in a selection process to guide managers on which tool to use and when.