Free Business Case Study Samples for Business Majors

Case studies are narratives that tell the story of an actual business with a real problem or strategy. Many business schools use real case studies as a teaching tool in the classroom. If you attend a graduate business program, such as an MBA program, you could look at hundreds, or even of thousands of cases, throughout your academic career. You may even be asked to write a case study or a case study analysis.

Looking at case study samples is a good way to familiarize yourself with cases so that you can be comfortable working with them. Some business schools and organizations sell case studies online for a fee. For example, Harvard Business Review sells millions of case studies each year. But buying every business case study you want to look at isn't always practical for every budget, so in this article, we're going to review some of the places online where you can find free case study samples. The case studies on these sites are specifically geared toward business majors.

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MIT Sloan's Learning Edge

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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management has a knowledge sharing resource known as LearningEdge. LearningEdge features a lot of valuable learning and teaching tools for management educators and students. One of the more useful things that you will find here is a collection of case studies that are designed to spark discussion about topics like leadership, business ethics, operations management, entrepreneurship, strategy, sustainability, and related topics. Some of the cases are decision-based, while others are demonstrative.

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The Case Centre

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The Case Centre sells case studies but they are also committed to providing free case studies to promote the case study method as an educational tool. After registering for a free account on the site, you can browse their large selection of free case study samples from business schools and organizations around the globe. Some of the cases are recent on timely topics, while others date back 10 years or more.

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Acadia Institute of Case Studies (AICS)

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The School of Business Administration at Acadia University has a non-profit center known as the Acadia Institute of Case Studies (AICS). This resource provides educational materials in the form of case studies to help educators and instructors teach real-world business scenarios in the classroom. Most of their case studies focus on entrepreneurship and small business. However, they do have case studies on a wide range of topics, including accounting, finance, marketing, e-business, strategy, human resources, and related topics.

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Schroeder Inc.

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Schroeder Inc. is a private firm of consultants providing a selection of case studies that they have done for various organizations. The Schroeder Inc case studies cover a wide range of topics that would be of interest to business majors, including topics like business planning, growth planning, organizational instruction, operational planning, and related topics.