A business case study presents a real or fictional account of what occurred in a business or industry to help students analyze the presented events, problems, or solutions and apply theories learned in class.
The library does not have access to Harvard Business case studies or case studies published by other business schools. Why not? Case studies written for educational purposes and sold by a commercial vendor must be individually purchased because of copyright and licensing restrictions. Vendor websites can be consulted for options:
- Harvard Business School Publishing
- Darden Business Publishing (University of Virginia)
- Kellogg Case Publishing (Northwestern University)
- Ivey Publishing
- Case Centre (formerly the European Case Clearing House)
There are a few websites that provide free online access to case studies:
Sometimes case studies can be found in journal or magazine articles or e-books and accessed using library resources, like:
To search for a case study, you can either do a simple keyword search (ex: marketing and "case study"). Or, to get more precise results, use the advanced search feature of each database and select "Case Study" as a document type.
Questions? Contact the Business/SPEA Information Commons in-person or by e-mail or chat for assistance.