UVA Darden School Professor Presented With Case Centre Awards for Teaching Materials

Two University of Virginia Darden School of Business professors, a senior researcher and a Darden alumnus received awards for their teaching materials from The Case Centre, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to supporting the case method of teaching in business education.

Eric Aldrich, general manager for the Case Centre, presented the awards this week during First Coffee in the School’s PepsiCo Forum of Saunders Hall.

Darden faculty members use cases to teach about real-world business issues. Their teaching materials are available through Darden Business Publishing.

Deutsche Bank and the Road to Basel III  by Darden Professors Yiorgos Allayannis and Andy Wicks, Senior Researcher Gerry Yemen and alumnus Matthew Dougherty (MBA `12), was named “Best Finance Case.”

The case is set in 2012, just after Joseph Ackermann stepped down and co-CEOs Jürgen Fitschen and Anshu Jain assumed leadership of Deutsche Bank.

“This case talks about big issues,” said Allayannis. “Over the past six years, we have figured out how important banks are in the economy and their impact on growth or decline.”

At the core of the case is Deutsche Bank’s plan to reposition itself in the market and to meet the capital requirements imposed by Basel III, a worldwide, regulatory standard meant to strengthen banks.

“It is clear that banks cannot assume excessive risks — they must be responsible,” added Allayannis.

This case also gives rise to several ethical themes. Wicks, an ethics expert, co-teaches the case with Allayannis as part of the European residency of Darden’s Global MBA for Executives format of its MBA, which is taught in five regions around the globe.

“The ethical issues presented in this case force students to go outside of their comfort zones,” said Wicks. “The decision to balance Deutsche Bank’s global strategy with a local one pushes students beyond the numbers. One possible result is a debate about the implications of ‘Too Big to Fail.'”

Yemen, who has authored dozens of best-selling cases, said that while writing this case, she was surprised by the openness and transparency of the Deutsche Bank website.

“Even some of the dark events of Deutsche Bank’s past were listed for all to see,” said Yemen.

HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0, by Darden Professor Thomas Steenburgh, Harvard colleague Jill Avery and Harvard student Naseem Dahod, was named “Best Marketing and Sales Case.”

“Students love the concept of inbound marketing,” said Steenburgh. “They have witnessed and participated in the shift in power from the seller to the buyer. They want to learn how sales processes need to be redefined to compete in the world today.”

The case explores HubSpot’s consideration of which customer segments to target.

Steenburgh uses “HubSpot” to wrap up his First Year marketing course. It also has been successfully used in other courses such as advertising, integrated marketing communications, business-to-business marketing and entrepreneurial marketing.

These wins highlight Darden’s excellence in the case teaching method, a hallmark of the School’s No. 1 ranked education experience (The Economist, 2011-13).