By Neha Mittal
The case method has always been one of my favourite ways to teach. Students enjoy stepping into the shoes of a manager, analyzing a real business problem, and recommending a course of action. However, over the years I realized that many classroom discussions revolved around a single question: What should the protagonist do? While this develops analytical thinking, it does not fully reflect how decisions are made in organizations. Managers rarely make decisions alone. They work with customers, employees, regulators, suppliers, investors, and many other stakeholders, each bringing different priorities and constraints.
To better prepare students for this reality, I began incorporating role-playing into my case discussions. Instead of focusing only on the protagonist, students take on the roles of different stakeholders and defend decisions from those perspectives. I have found that this simple change completely transforms the classroom. Students become more engaged, discussions become more balanced, and, most importantly, students begin to appreciate that business decisions are rarely black and white. They learn that good managers must listen, communicate, negotiate, and balance competing interests before making decisions.
One of the biggest advantages of role-playing is that it helps students understand different stakeholder perspectives. Reading about stakeholders is one thing, but having to represent them is entirely different. When students are asked to argue from a stakeholder’s point of view, they must understand that person’s goals, constraints, and concerns, not just their own opinions.
For example, in my Airbnb: Balancing Business, Housing, and Public Safety case, I divide the class into groups representing city officials, Airbnb hosts, long-term residents, and tourists. Each group identifies its goals, concerns, and preferred policy before participating in a class discussion. The discussion quickly becomes much richer than a traditional case analysis. Hosts argue for property rights and supplemental income, residents emphasize affordable housing and neighbourhood stability, and tourists focus on convenience and cost, while city officials struggle to balance economic development with community interests. By the end of the exercise, students recognize that there is no perfect solution. Instead of asking, “Who is right?” they begin asking, “How can these competing interests be balanced?” That shift in thinking is one of the most valuable outcomes of role-playing.
Role-playing has proven especially effective in operations and supply chain courses because it allows students to experience the importance of communication rather than simply hearing about it.
In my Tucker Company Worldwide: Delivering Value in Logistics Services (one of Ivey’s Bestseller cases), I divide the class into two groups. One represents the logistics provider, while the other represents the customer. In the first round, neither side is allowed to communicate. Both groups develop transportation plans using only the information available in the request for proposal. As expected, many assumptions are made, and the proposed solutions often fail to meet customer expectations.
In the second round, I allow the two groups to work together. Students ask questions, clarify assumptions, and jointly develop a transportation plan. The difference between the two rounds is striking. Students quickly discover that effective communication is not just good practice, it leads to better decisions, lower costs, and higher customer satisfaction. Rather than telling students why communication matters, the exercise allows them to experience it themselves.
I also use role-playing in cases where there is significant uncertainty and no obvious right answer.
In Busy Baby and the Tariff Trap: A Small Business at a Crossroads, students evaluate how entrepreneur Beth Benike should respond after new tariffs threaten the survival of her company. Different teams argue for reshoring production, expanding internationally, launching a crowdfunding campaign, or pursuing policy advocacy. As students defend their assigned strategy, they begin to appreciate the difficult trade-offs entrepreneurs face. Every option has benefits, risks, and unintended consequences. By listening to other teams, students often realize that a solution they initially dismissed also has considerable merit.
Another benefit I have noticed is that role-playing encourages participation from students who might otherwise remain quiet during a traditional case discussion. When students speak as a stakeholder rather than expressing their own personal opinion, they often feel more comfortable contributing to the conversation. They are less worried about being “right” or “wrong” because their goal is to represent their assigned role as convincingly as possible. This creates a more inclusive classroom where a wider range of students participate, challenge one another’s assumptions, and build on each other’s ideas. As a result, discussions become more energetic, balanced, and collaborative.
Since developing these activities, I have found myself designing newer cases with similar opportunities for role-playing, particularly in areas such as business ethics and corporate governance.
Role-playing also changes my role as an instructor. Instead of leading every discussion, I become a facilitator. Students challenge one another’s ideas, defend their positions with evidence from the case, and work together to find common ground. The classroom becomes much more interactive, and quieter students often participate more because they are speaking on behalf of a stakeholder rather than expressing an opinion.
For instructors who are interested in trying role-playing, the activity does not need to be complicated. Even assigning two or three stakeholder groups and allowing students 10–15 minutes to prepare can significantly enrich a case discussion. The key is to define the roles clearly, encourage students to support their arguments with evidence from the case, and leave enough time for a thoughtful debrief. Small changes like these can make a traditional case discussion far more interactive and memorable.
Over time, I have learned that successful role-playing requires careful planning. Students need clearly defined roles and enough time to prepare before the discussion begins. I also find that the debrief is just as important as the activity itself. After the role-play, we discuss what students learned, whether their opinions changed, and why different stakeholder groups reached different conclusions. These conversations often produce some of the deepest learning of the entire class.
After using role-playing across cases in strategy, operations, entrepreneurship, and public policy, I have become convinced that it is one of the most effective ways to deepen learning in case teaching. Students certainly enjoy the activities, but the real value goes far beyond engagement. Role-playing helps them see problems from multiple perspectives, communicate more effectively, negotiate with others, and appreciate the complexity of managerial decision-making. Most importantly, it moves students beyond analyzing what the protagonist should do and prepares them for what managers actually do every day, which is work with people who see the same problem very differently!
