Teaching case study win for GSB

The Case Writing Centre of the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Graduate School of Business (GSB) has, for the second consecutive year, been named among the winners in the annual Case Writing Competition of the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), taking top honours in the 2018 African Business Cases category.

The centre won the award for a teaching case study on Vitalite, a Zambian company that operates “at the intersection” of solar energy technology and mobile money in that country.

The winning case was authored by Vimendree Perumal and Peter Munthali, both MBA graduates from the GSB; Professor Ralph Hamann, research director at the GSB; Vitalite co-founder Dr John Fay; and Sarah Boyd of the GSB Case Writing Centre.

Fay co-founded Vitalite soon after completing his PhD at the GSB under Hamann’s supervision. The first products released by the company – the stated mission of which is “to make quality products and services accessible and affordable to all Zambian households” – were stand-alone solar lights and energy efficient stoves.

Vitalite has since introduced Zambia’s first pay-as-you-go (PayGO) solar home system, making electricity affordable at much lower income levels.

Case study

It was Hamman who first proposed that Vitalite be developed as a teaching case study for MBA students, with Perumal and, later, Munthali working on it as their main research projects during their MBA. Their two studies were combined in the teaching case study written up with Boyd.

Today Hamman uses it on the Business, Government and Society course he teaches on the MBA, specifically in a session on innovation.

“The case shows why and how founders may continuously question and recreate their business model to achieve their economic and social aspirations in challenging contexts.”

“Vitalite has been a fabulous company to study and discuss in our classes,” he said.

“The case shows why and how founders may continuously question and recreate their business model to achieve their economic and social aspirations in challenging contexts.”

It also provides a number of important additional themes for classroom discussion, he explained.

These include the hurdles faced by businesses operating in areas of limited statehood, as well as the challenge of running a hybrid enterprise, such as one that has both social and financial objectives.

Putting together a teaching case of a multilayered award-winning pedigree is demanding, Hamann added.

Among the challenges are collecting sufficient data that are rich and reliable, making sense of that data, writing up the case study, and then revisiting and re-editing it numerous times until it fits the bill. In this case, it meant that both Perumal and Munthali had to travel to Zambia to embed themselves in the company.

Compelling storyline

From these initial findings, they had to fashion a compelling storyline that focuses on key learning objectives of the case.

The Vitalite teaching case also benefited from different perspectives brought to it by Perumal and Munthali.

“It’s an interesting and valuable case because it’s been researched consecutively by different students, so the data collection has a continuation. That presents a rare opportunity,” noted Claire Barnardo, who heads the GSB Case Writing Centre.

The centre is a recent addition to the school and was established specifically to develop and publish African-focused teaching case studies that are relevant to business in the sometimes unique and often confounding contexts of emerging markets.

“It’s an interesting and valuable case because it’s been researched consecutively by different students, so the data collection has a continuation.”

The GSB Case Writing Centre’s current collection consists of 34 teaching cases published since its inception in 2017. In addition to the win in the EFMD African Business Cases category, GSB teaching cases were also awarded top prizes in the 2017 African Governance Showcase Competition and the 2017 Emerald/Association of African Business Schools (AABS) Case Study Competition. They were also featured among the top 10 teaching cases of the 2018 international CEEMAN/Emerald Case Writing Competition.

The EFMD is a global non-profit organisation dedicated to management development, and serves as an internationally recognised accreditation body for business schools, business school programmes and corporate universities. Each year, it presents awards across 17 categories in its Case Writing Competition.

The event aims to provide useful insights into the internal practices of the profiled companies, while also reflecting social and economic changes from across the globe that serve as practical teaching and learning material.

Some 550 submitted cases vied for the 17 category awards in 2018.