CASE-STUDY ALLIANCE TURKEY Erasmus Project

Project Title

CASE-STUDY ALLIANCE TURKEY

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship); Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Quality and Relevance of Higher Education in Partner Countries

Project Summary

The context of this project was the higher education in entrepreneurship, business, and management in undergraduate major and minor, MBA, and Executive MBA levels.

The primary objective of this project was to enhance the diffusion of the case teaching and case writing in emerging countries and economies to improve the quality and relevance of education, to create high value learning opportunities and to strengthen quality through mobility and cross-border cooperation in higher education, by developing real-life case studies on entrepreneurship, business and management. As the wealth of training materials grow, this will increase the quality of higher learning opportunities in emerging countries and economies and strengthen the understanding of the business context in those countries in more developed countries.

The project was coordinated by ITU ARI Teknokent which is the science park of ITU with the collaboration of İstanbul Technical University Department of Management Engineering—GINOVA, Middle East Technical University Department of Business Administration—GIMER from Turkey, Rotterdam Erasmus School of Management Case Development Centre from the Netherlands, and SMART Partners from England. The project was governed by a management structure consisting of a project board, an executive committee, a project coordinator, project control officers providing financial and administrative support and an external advisor overseeing project risks and progress. Together with the project management structure, we also employed a detailed management plan and a set of management tools for the successful completion of this project.

To reach the project objectives, workshops were organised among different universities in different cities of Turkey. These cities have a central position in their region regarding their accessibility, helping us to reach as much as people who are eager to work with the case study method. During transnational project meetings in the UK and Netherlands, case study experts from SMART Partners and RSM had trained a core Turkish team to review and assess locally written cases. During those meetings, cases written in the workshops in Turkey had also been reviewed. Moreover, multiplier events were organised to present intellectual outputs of the project about case teaching and case writing.

Our workshops reached more than two hundred and fifty people who want to use the case study method in their courses and/or want to write a case about their own experience and local contexts. We had disseminated project outputs via our web pages and distributed brochures regarding our project and outputs of the project in relevant events such as congresses and symposiums. With our two multiplier events covered by the project’s multiplier event budget and two additional events covered by project management and implementation budget we presented intellectual outputs of the project to more than three hundred people and brought together different parties such as scholars, science parks, companies, startups, and publishers. More than forty cases initiated and developed during our workshops. Ten of the most prominent ones among them were presented in our Selected Cases Volume. We took the first step of international case repositories with diverse cases from emerging country contexts and issuing a volume of emerging country case studies, in the form of an edited journal special issue, or an edited book.

In the longer-term the project will potentially:
1. Create more case studies, in entrepreneurship, business, and management, particularly about SMEs and provide different examples to readers from various sectors and backgrounds, giving them realistic warnings about what to expect in emerging country settings.
2. Help higher education institutions offer a more realistic preview of the post-college work experience, due to the skills generated by the case method, such as communication, teamwork, analyses, and learning to learn, that are essential to meet workplace demands.
3. Create future opportunities of cooperation and collaboration, particularly in the area of joint case study authorship and editing, at the international level with the partner and participating universities, and enhance the diversity of teaching cases and the case study writer’s community worldwide.
4. Trigger and improve university-industry collaboration at the pan-European level, due to the invaluable opportunity provided by the case study development by mixed teams.
5. Provide broader access to cases in emerging markets such as Turkey, and therefore helping higher education institutions to train future managers and expatriates with more effectiveness and relevance.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 348462,65 Eur

Project Coordinator

ARI Teknokent Proje Gelistirme Planlama A.S. & Country: TR

Project Partners

• MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
• ERASMUS UNIVERSITEIT ROTTERDAM
• ISTANBUL TEKNIK UNIVERSITESI
• SMART Partners