Kennedy School, Business School Develop Women-Related Case Studies

When graduate students at Harvard sit down with case studies in business and government, chances are they're reading scenarios with men as the key decision makers.

Thanks to efforts now under way at the Business School and the Kennedy School of Government, that situation is beginning to change. Both Schools have launched projects to develop case studies that highlight women in leadership roles.

Cases are narratives, based on true situations, that students read, analyze, and discuss in class, sometimes with role playing. They are an integral part of the case method, an interactive approach to learning.

"There's a lot of demand from our students for cases with women as protagonists," said Howard Husock, director of the Case Program at the Kennedy School.

The School is taking advantage of a new entity at Harvard, the Council of Women World Leaders, to begin building cases involving women. When the Council gathered in Cambridge for a conference in April, members of Husock's staff interviewed some of the participants whose experiences match the curricular needs of faculty and the School.

"For us, this is a tremendous intellectual windfall that the Council has come along," Husock said.

The Business School, meanwhile, has teamed up with the Committee of 200, a national organization of women business executives, to develop cases focusing on management issues involving women. When faculty members write cases, committee members will work with them to find organizations whose women business executives might serve as suitable subjects.

"Our goal is to make the educational process more like the business world, to show that women can be and are business leaders," said Myra M. Hart, assistant professor of business administration, who is coordinating the research and course development for this initiative.

The project was launched by an initial grant from businesswoman and lawyer Marjorie Alfus, whom Business School Dean Kim B. Clark praised as "a catalyst for a project that will be of great significance in the world of management education."

Once developed, these cases will be used by Harvard as well as students around the country and world.

The Kennedy School, for example, sells cases to 500-600 educational and corporate institutions, many of them schools of public policy and management.

The Business School is the word's leading producer and distributor of cases. Each year, the faculty develops more than 700 new cases and other teaching materials, and approximately 7,500 titles are available in the School's collection.

-- Debra Bradley Ruder