February 9, 2020. Shanghai – The case review and Nominated Case Award selection processes for the 2019 Global Contest for the Best China-Focused Cases have now been completed. During the September 1 to November 8 submission period, a total of 254 valid cases were submitted by authors from both China and abroad, up by 22% from 2018. Included in the submissions were 120 cases from members of the Shanghai MBA Case Development and Sharing Platform, an increase of 32% over the previous year. In all, 87% of submitted cases dealt with business-related topics such as finance, accounting and control, strategy and general management, marketing and entrepreneurship, growing by 44% compared with last year.

The case review process was carried out in three phases: the initial review, blind review and area-editor review. During the initial review, each submitted case went through a compliance check of its content and format. As case writers now pay more attention to copyright issues, formatting and structure, the rejection rate of the initial review has declined for three years in a row, dropping from 18% in 2017 to 7% in 2019. Cases that passed the initial review went on to the second phase – a blind review conducted by two experts. During the third phase, the area-editor combined the input from the blind review with his/her own professional judgment to determine the final results and comments. Cases that provoked a considerable divergence of opinion during this process were subject to the discretion of the chief editor.

Due to the increase in the case review workload and further refinement of the review process and criteria, the review team was expanded in the second half of 2019 to include 54 senior experts from Shanghai MBA Case Development and Sharing Platform member schools, Tsinghua University, CEIBS and other domestic colleges. Prior to the start of the case review process, an expert seminar was held to reach a consensus on the review criteria and requirements. In order to ensure the fairness of the competition, full consideration was given to both the relevance of disciplines and recusal of reviews (to avoid conflicts of interests) when distributing cases to reviewers for the blind review. All the case writers participating in the contest will receive review comments and the results for their cases in the coming few days. For cases subject to “revision before evaluation again”, authors should revise their case according to the comments provided and resubmit the revised version for further evaluation by area editors.

The case review process was followed by the selection process. Based on the review comments and recommendations of the blind review experts and area-editors, the cases were ranked by their weighted scores and the top 16 cases were shortlisted for the Nominated Case Award. The Editorial Board for Management Disciplines, composed of experts from CEIBS, East China University of Science and Technology, East China Normal University, Nankai University, Tsinghua University, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and Beihang University, then carried out independent blind reviews and rated the 16 cases. On February 9, 2020, the discipline-based editorial board held a video conference to discuss and decide the winners of the Nominated Case Award. The Nominated Cases will be sent to an international expert panel for further review and to compete for the Best Case Award. Since there were noticeable improvements in the quality of cases compared with the previous year, the discipline-based editorial board has also approved two additional “Special Recognition Award” to the list of winners. On March 31, 2020, the complete list of winners will be officially announced on the website of ChinaCases.Org. Stay tuned for this exciting announcement!