Case Studies

IJAM Associate Editor: Philippe Ravanas

Aims and Scope
This Section aims at collecting case studies that:

• Describe a story offering the opportunity to discuss it in class
• Underline best (or even worst) practices
• Provide a useful tool for teaching
• Help in linking scholarly debate with the practice

Submitted manuscripts will be subject to a double-blind peer-review process involving the IJAM Case Studies Associate Editor and two anonymous reviewers. Case studies should be international in scope, and they should depict or be inspired by real situations. They should be focused on one issue/situation/controversy that executives, organizations, fields, or industries encounter, and they should suggest how to lead the discussion about the case in class fostering the theory and the learning takeaways from the discussion.

Guidelines for publication
IJAM Case Studies must be submitted with accompanying Teaching Notes. Submissions should be between 5,000 and 7,000 words in length (with the +/- 10% rule). References should follow IJAM guidelines on Manuscript formatting. Only include references that you have read, understood, and used in the submission. Do not use more than approximately 10 references without some clear justification. Additionally, any complimentary documents can be submitted as well (Excel files, ppt, videos…). If the Case is developed in partnership with a company, the author(s) is (are) required to provide an authorization duly signed by the company to publish the case. When submitting a Case study please submit three separate files:

1. Authors and Affiliations
Please list all authors who played a significant role in developing the points presented in the article, provide full affiliation information (full institutional address and ZIP code, and e-mail address) for all authors, and a short bio.

2. IJAM Case Study
Please provide a concise and specific title that reflects the content of the article. Authors should supply up to six relevant keywords that describe the subject of their manuscript. The format of the main body of the article is flexible: it should be concise, making it easy to read and review, and presented in a format that is appropriate for the type of case presented. The case study must be a qualitative descriptive piece, often containing narrative elements, which seek to explore a particular situation or sequence of events in a non-prescriptive way. Conclusions may be left open to the interpretation of the reader. The writer of a case study must make a conscious effort to refrain from distorting the situation being described with his or her own beliefs, prejudices, or assumptions. Any references should be listed as Footnotes, following IJAM guidelines on Manuscript formatting. Only use references that you have read, understood, and used in the Case Study. Do not use more than approximately 5 references without some clear justification.

3. IJAM Case Study Teaching Notes
Teaching notes are fundamental in the submission. They should include as minimum requirements:

• an abstract that highlights the problem at stake in the Case and why the case study might be interesting for academic purposes
• the educational aims of the case and the theory it addresses
• the recommended use for the Case (i.e.,: target audience, type of program)
• Case Study questions and assignments proposed for the discussion
• a suggested brief lesson plan for the instructor

The editorial process for IJAM Case Studies

Once a Case has been submitted by the authors, it goes through the following steps of the editorial process:

1. Initial assessment e-mail: Authors receive an initial assessment e-mail within two weeks of submitting their case. If the case is deemed unsuitable for publication, the process ends here. If the case is deemed suitable, the following steps apply.

2. Case sent for peer review: The Associate Editor selects two reviewers with expertise in the theme(s) addressed in the case. These reviewers have four to six weeks to submit their evaluation reports. The peer-review process focuses on:

• Transferability: A Case Study should be easy to use for another instructor/lecturer and the educational objectives should be detailed. Finally. The Case Study should be adaptable to different types of audiences.
• Authenticity: A Case Study should refer to real situations and scenarios, even when the Authors need to respect a clause of anonymity in the narrative of the Case. It should refer to settings related to creativity, the arts, and culture.
• Learning potential: its teaching objectives should aim at the comprehension or application of a theory in creativity/arts management/cultural policy studies, or at targeting higher-level teaching objectives such as the development of judgment, critical thinking, and decision-making skills.
• Clarity and logic of the paper: the writing should be clear and comprehensible above all for non-academics.

3. Editorial decision #1: Based on the evaluation reports and on his/her own assessment of the case, the Associate Editor makes an editorial decision corresponding to one of the following four recommendations:

• Accepted
• R&R with minor revisions: The authors must make the requested changes and return the revised version of the case and the teaching notes within one month.
• R&R with major revisions: The authors must make the requested changes and resubmit the manuscript within three months.
• Rejected

4. Editorial decision #2: Based on the revised version of the case and teaching notes and on the author’s, letter detailing the changes made, the Associate Editor makes a second editorial decision. If major changes have been made, the editor may ask for the opinion of the reviewers. The Associate Editor will make one of the following recommendations:

• Accepted.
• Additional changes requested: The authors must make the requested changes and return the newly revised version of the case and teaching notes within one month.
• Rejected.

5. Once the case and notes have been accepted, the Journal’s editorial team will then do a linguistic revision and formatting of the documents. The authors will be asked to approve the suggested corrections rapidly.

6. As soon as the case and teaching have been finalized, they will be posted online on the Journal’s website. At this point, the documents can be accessed by subscribers in accordance with the applicable terms and conditions of use. The case will then be published in the next issue of the IJAM.
Teaching notes will be available only to subscribers or Faculty whose university subscribed to the Journal.

Reasons for rejection of a case study

By the Journal’s editorial policy, the most common reasons for concluding that a case is unsuitable for publication in IJAM are as follows:

1. It is a research case rather than a teaching case: The case is built around a theory or conceptual framework that is transparently obvious; it contains a lot of data, but it is not linked to any specific teaching objectives; its main purpose is to apply a theory or demonstrate the value or importance of a theory or conceptual framework; it is very intangible, insufficiently lively, or dynamic.
2. The case lacks value as a teaching tool: It is an exercise rather than a case study; its teaching objectives are not aimed at the comprehension or application of a theory, or at targeting higher-level teaching objectives such as the development of judgment, critical thinking, and decision-making skills
3. The case is insufficiently international in scope: The situation described is of little interest to a broad readership; the description of the local context lacks detail, making comprehension difficult for readers unfamiliar with the context; the teaching notes fail to explain how the case problem is relevant outside of the local context described.
4. The teaching notes are insufficiently developed: The teaching objectives and intended end-user courses are not sufficiently clear; the teaching scenario is unconvincing or poorly developed; the case analysis is superficial; no conceptual or theoretical support is proposed; there are no “answers” to the questions proposed, etc.
5. The case has not been authorized for distribution: The case uses actual, non-public information, but authorization has not been obtained from the company for distribution of the case; the case is based on actual information that has been poorly disguised or the company’s authorization is missing. The case has been published elsewhere.