ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

Cases which meet the following 8 criteria are eligible for the case writing competition.

1. Cases must not have been previously used in a case competition, published by a case center, published in a journal, or publicly available.
2. Going beyond a simple description of an organization, the case must present a specific managerial challenge.
3. Regardless of the organization, its size, industry, or geographic region, the managerial challenge in the case must be related to social and environmental responsibility.
4. Cases may be submitted by any author or group of authors (internal or external to HEC Montréal).
5. Cases must be written in English or in French.
6. Cases must present a real-life situation (based on public data, non-public non-disguised data, or non-public disguised data). Fictive cases are not admissible. Cases must be submitted along with the authorization of the company presented in the case or an indication that only publicly available information was used to develop the case.
7. Cases must have a maximum of 12 pages of text.
8. By submitting a case, authors authorize that—if their case wins this case writing competition—it can be used in the 2024 HEC CSR Challenge case competition (i.e., distributed to competition participants and judges).

EVALUATION

All submitted cases which meet the submission criteria will be evaluated by a panel of judges. The panel will include representatives from HEC Montreal, the IJCSM, the Pôle Ideos, MBA alumni and experts working in the industry. The panel will evaluate the submissions according to the following criteria:

• The case presents a current challenge in CSR and/or environmental sustainability that will be relevant to an international audience
• The case will provide an engaging and interesting learning experience to participants
• The case presents a clear question to be answered or issue to be resolved
• The case includes sufficient information to solve the stated question/issue
• The case uses quality data throughout
• The case is well written, clearly structured, and free of errors
• What do you find to be the main strengths and limits of the case? And do you feel this case should be used in the CSR Challenge?

All decisions made by the selection committee are final.

IMPORTANT DATES

November 1st, 2023 (11:59pm EDT): Deadline for submitting cases with cover letter.

November – December 2023: Case selection by the jury.

December 2023 – February 2024: Working with authors, the selected case will be edited and translated as needed to prepare it for the competition. While authors are not required to submit teaching notes for the case writing competition, authors of the winning case will be encouraged to prepare a 2–3-page document for competition judges which should include a summary of the case, tips for solving the case, and general examples of potential solutions.

March 2024: Selected case(s) will be used in the CSR Challenge. The case writing prize will be announced at the closing ceremony of the CSR Challenge. Winning case(s) will be released back to authors at the closing of the 2024 HEC CSR Challenge.

Note: The case writing winners cannot be announced before the competition as the cases which are being used in the competition cannot be known in advance by teams competing in the CSR Challenge.