As a way of encouraging teams to be ambitious, imaginative, and to challenge themselves in selecting their cases, we are allowing überjudges (who make the ultimate decision about awards) to take into account the degree of difficulty of a case. For 2021, we aren’t making this part of the judging form, but we want to be able to reward teams for their efforts if this seems appropriate. We’ll evaluate this after the competition and consider including this in the judging form in the future.
Factors that would put cases at the “more difficult” end of the spectrum might include: a new issue in business ethics or one that has cutting edge ethical concerns; complex features of the case that make it difficult to identify and consequently analyze the central issues in the case; involves a new or developing technology or industry; requires particular technical expertise; has multiple ethical issues; affects a wide range of stakeholders; has multiple competing solutions (each with pluses and minuses).