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Mission and background

For nearly 50 years, HEC Montréal has promoted the use of the case study as a preferred method for teaching management.

The mission of the HEC Montréal Case Centre is to promote the use of the case study method and the related active approach to learning/teaching by management professors, with a focus on French-speaking institutions.

To fulfil this mission, the Case Centre focuses its actions in three main, complementary areas:

promotion and production of high-quality international cases, thanks notably to the International Journal of Case Studies in Management (IJCSM), an electronic journal of peer-reviewed case studies, in French and English, produced by authors from all over the world;
establishment of an online case study collection that currently holds over 2,000 original, adapted or translated cases and teaching documents. In addition to cases published in the IJCSM, this collection also contains hundreds of other documents, many of them produced by HEC Montréal professors;
organization of events offering training and promoting awareness about the case study method, not only for members of the HEC Montréal community, but also for academics across Quebec and Canada.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE HEC MONTRÉAL CASE CENTRE
2023	20th anniversary of the International Journal of Case Studies in Management (IJCSM) celebrated at a cocktail party held at HEC Montréal on November 23, 2023. (Photos)
2012	Partnership with Quebec’s La Presse daily newspaper for the weekly publication of excerpts of a case of interest to a broad readership.
2011	January: Anne Mesny, Professor of Management, becomes the new Director of the Case Centre and Editor-in-Chief of the IJCSM.
	November 2: “Journée de la pédagogie,” under the theme of the case method of teaching, organized jointly by the Case Centre and the DAIP at HEC Montréal. The keynote speaker is Robert D. Austin, Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of New Brunswick and a former professor at Harvard Business School. Nearly 80 professors from several Quebec universities participate in the workshop.
2010	Partnership with Harvard Business Publishing for the publication of selected IJCSM cases in the prestigious university’s catalogue.
2007	Vital Roy, Professor in Information Technologies, takes over as Director of the Case Centre.
2003	Launch, in February, of the first issue of the International Journal of Case Studies in Management (IJCSM). The Case Centre Director and Editor-in-Chief of the IJCSM, Marie-Hélène Jobin, a professor of operations management, signed the first editorial of this peer-reviewed journal.
1999	Creation of the HEC Montréal Case Centre on October 27, 1999, under the direction of Professor Laurent Lapierre. Its mandate is to promote the production, dissemination and archiving of quality cases, and to raise awareness about the value of the case method as a research and pedagogical tool.
1990	Launch of the Alma Lepage Award.
1987	Creation of the Catalogue: cases are made available to institutions of higher learning throughout the international Francophone community.
1976	Creation of the “Centrale de cas” at HEC Montréal. Its mandate is to collect all the cases in circulation at HEC Montréal, to clarify copyright issues and to establish policies governing the use of these cases.

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