Toward Documenting The Impact of Teaching Cases: A Multidimensional Model

The impact of research has become an important topic for accredited business schools and faculty alike. And yet there is no uniform method to measure the impact of published teaching cases, and this presents challenges for faculty publishing in this domain. This paper presents multidimensional model, extending beyond citation rates, which business schools may use to evaluate a faculty member’s intellectual contributions related to teaching cases. The model focuses on four dimensions: a published teaching case, industry or government involvement, citations along with views and downloads, and classroom usage by an independent faculty member who is not a co-author. The authors argue that when all four criteria are present, a case is at its most comprehensive level of impact, but utilizing a subset of the criteria also results in impact for a case. Student focused assessment related to case utilization, as well as the implications of the model are also discussed.