Chapter 2: “Teacher, Tell Me a Story”: Using Fiction in the Leadership Classroom

Because of the increasing diversity in our business school classrooms, more faculty are turning to nontraditional methods (French & Grey, 1996), considering the lecture format for course delivery to be outmoded (Birk, 1997; Rubenstein, 1983). Other methods such as case analyses, experiential activities, and active learning processes have been suggested to lead to more effective learning outcomes for our students (DeBerry, 1998), particularly when skill acquisition is the goal of the course rather than merely knowledge delivery (Lundberg, 1994).

Probably the most commonly used pedagogical method that links the classroom to the realities of business is the case method of instruction (Lundberg, 1994). Developed at the beginning of the last century at Harvard Business School (Christensen, 1989), the purpose of the case method is to provide business students with the knowledge of how to act when presented with new situations in a nonstatic environment. As undergraduate or MBA students, we faculty ourselves participated in a full spate of case analyses. Many of us were taught the case method during our doctoral programs, or were at least directed to “old classics” or favorites by our mentors. There are two forceful arguments for using cases. First, case studies work because they encourage students to wrestle with the problems that are presented, forcing them to seek and find their way out of the situation. Student learning is maximized in the process as they devise their own solutions. Rather than passively gaining knowledge and then applying it, the knowledge is gained through the action process of the case discussion. Second, cases provide students with a context in which to learn by doing. Traditional teaching materials often ignore or downplay contexts (particularly industrial and industrial settings) (Lundberg, 1994), while the case provides the student with a chunk of reality that grounds the students with facts that are faced in real-life situations (Lawrence, 1953). They also provide students with opportunities for social learning (Bandura, 1977), as they explore the actions that were successful and those that were not.