Live Case Exercise for Financial Reporting

By: Tatiana Sandino and Marshal Herrmann

Format:Print
| Language:English
| Pages:25

Abstract

Harvard Business School employs the case method as a cornerstone of its pedagogy, providing students with opportunities to engage in discussions related to difficult or contentious decisions confronted by real-world organizations. In this “live case,” we depart from our regular approach of providing students with a curated case for discussion and instead encourage students to directly explore financial reporting data from public sources. This exercise assigns students the task of researching a designated company, including the strategic information and financial data disclosed by the company. The exercise fosters hands-on experience and helps students develop skills in data analysis and research. Leveraging the lively method of case discussions, this exercise provides a dynamic platform to discuss and comprehend financial reports and other data disclosed by companies, and to identify the key issues the company is grappling with. In this note, we describe our experience teaching a live case to a cohort of over 1,000 MBA students at Harvard Business School, utilizing Southwest Airlines as the designated company for the live case.