Sage Business Cases Author Profile: Matt Gilley
 | Dr. Matt Gilley holds the Bill Greehey Endowed Chair in Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility in the Greehey School of Business at St. Mary's University. He earned a Ph.D. in business strategy from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1997. Prior to joining the Greehey School in 2007, Dr. Gilley served on the faculty of the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University and on the business faculty at James Madison University. Dr. Gilley has consulted extensively with senior executives on issues related to ethics, corporate social responsibility, business strategy, and leadership for over 20 years. His clients have included large multinational corporations, government agencies, electric utilities, and many others. Dr. Gilley's research and teaching center on ethical leadership, corporate social responsibility, and business strategy. His research has been published in leading journals including Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Management, and others. |
Cases from Matt on Sage Business Cases
Q&A with Matt
Q: How do you integrate cases into your classes?
A: I have used cases extensively in my courses for over 20 years. I use them not only to drive home key points from lectures and text books, but also to give students the opportunity to apply their knowledge to solving complex problems outlined in a case. Depending on the type of course, I will oftentimes lecture one class period and go through a case the next class period, sometimes using as many as ten cases in a semester.
Q: How do students respond to the cases?
A: Students respond extremely well to cases. I believe part of the positive student response is driven by the fact that going over a case puts them in the driver’s seat, so to speak, by creating an opportunity for them to interact with their peers and “roll up their sleeves” to solve an interesting challenge.
Q: Do you have any tips for those who are new to cases and want to use them in courses?
A: I believe that the best approach to using cases in my classes is one in which students are given a short, high-impact case with significant information gaps. The students are ideally then split into teams and charged with developing a professional-quality response/presentation in a short amount of time. Once time is “up”, the students are then asked to brief the class on how they’d address the issue(s) outlined in the case, and we all debate the merits of their proposals. As a result, every person in the class has been given a chance to participate (by virtue of their being in a small breakout group), and several have been given the opportunity to speak before the whole class. In over two decades of using this approach, I have found it to work uniformly well across a variety of courses.
Q: Do you have any case writing advice for those who’d like to get started?
A: Those interested in writing cases should jump right in! I’ve found the greatest inspiration in simply checking the business press every day to see what new scandal, merger, acquisition, product failure/success, etc. has occurred. There are literally dozens of interesting case ideas that pop up in the news daily!
