Justice Christine Cahill (ret.) transplanted the FSI project from the University of Michigan Law School for implementation in King County, WA, by her organization, the Child Justice Advocacy Center (CJAC), which focuses on child welfare issues. Externally, the FSI relies on authorizers and referral partners with widely varying interests to refer cases and cooperate in addressing clients’ legal needs. Organizationally, the FSI is managed by Jennifer Clancy of the CJAC, which also employs and houses the social worker. Other project partners – the Washington Justice Center and the Parent Support Association – employ the remaining team partners and contract their services to the FSI project. Internally, the multi-disciplinary aspect of the team brings together professions not accustomed to collaboration to address and manage clients’ legal issues.
Jennifer Clancy, Project Director for the CJAC and protagonist of this case, implemented and supervises the project. As we meet Clancy, two social workers, two attorneys, and one parent ally have left the project in its short two-year history – a turnover rate of 167 percent. Upon the most recent departure, Clancy faces the decision to shut down the time-limited pilot or reengage stakeholders and modify aspects of governance and management to address deficiencies in communication and accountability that are impacting staff performance, engagement and satisfaction.
This case depicts the policy challenges and strategies of Mi Young Hong, the Director of the Air Pollution Control Department in South Korea’s Ministry of the Environment (MOE). Hong encounters various obstacles and opportunities as she design and enforce air quality regulations that directly affect the life and health of citizens. As students read, they will gain a concrete understanding of the possibilities as well as the frustrations that inevitably come with managing a controversial government agency in a political environment.
Privatization and Performance in Northern California's Battle with the Opioid Epidemic is a single, comprehensive case study that examines administrative efforts to combat opioid drug abuse in Northern California. In response to rising opioid addiction and drug overdose deaths, coupled with state-level mandates for local areas to provide drug treatment options, county administrators in Northern California pursue a regional consortium offering treatment services through contracted arrangements with private sector providers, known as the Nor Cal Rehabilitation Services Consortium(NCRC). Although based upon real-world events, various aspects of administrator names and titles, agency characteristics, and caseload details are fictionalized and curated for classroom activity and assessment. The broad purposes of the case revolve around identifying and developing central aspects of public administration research methods, program evaluation, and performance management. To this end, the case study and teaching plan center on creating a comprehensive evaluation design, including developing various components such as research questions, logic models, sampling and data collection approaches, and data analysis techniques. This case relates to timely administrative issues that are occurring within municipal and county-level health and human service departments across America.
The Gangnam district government in the City of Seoul, South Korea, faced a challenge all too familiar to urban governments around the world: growing parking demand and a corresponding shortage of parking spaces. As the gap between parking service demand and parking space supply increased, the Department of Parking Management (DPM) in the Gangnam district government dealt with an increasing number of illegally parked vehicles in residential and commercial areas as well as on public streets. Illegally parked vehicles generated not only terrible traffic, but also complaints from different citizen groups, such as drivers who received parking tickets and residents and business owners who could not use their assigned parking spaces when needed. Facing these citizens’ complaints about illegal parking, Mr. Joo, head of the DPM, adopted new digital technologies (e.g. online parking payment systems, GIS/GPS-equipped parking enforcement vehicles) to provide timely and effective responses to such complaints. The DPM’s adoption of new digital technologies, however, created other challenges. Once the new technologies came online, Mr. Joo and his team struggled to balance improving the performance of new technology-enabled parking services with promoting citizen end users’ participation in the development of online parking services and managing resistance from parking employees concerned about the potential use of the new digital technologies to directly monitor their work.
This case study will help students to learn comparative analytic perspectives and conflict management using an innovative approach. It helps students understand the use of the Public Participation Geographic Information System (PPGIS) method as a scientific and systematic tool for participatory governance to reduce conflict in allocating undesirable facilities.
Through a new human resources approach, the city of Goyang, South Korea was able to provide clear and fair career opportunities for its employees. This case study will help students understand the conditions and requirements necessary for the adoption and implementation of strategic HR practices in local governments.
As an example of interagency collaboration, this case allows students to think further about feasible and sustainable conditions of interagency collaboration where a collaboration network should evolve as government agencies learn more about its possibilities and challenges, and be continuously refined based on emerging demands and changing environments.
This case describes how Amanda Fellows, a newly hired Environmental Specialist with limited experience in the electric utility environmental sector, exercised leadership within a shifting authorizing environment in which integral relationships were strained and the organization’s culture was not focused on environmental excellence.
There are five major learning objectives in this case: asset specificity, agency theory, stewardship theory, market management, and contracting for high-stakes, costly mega-projects. The case enables instructors to lead students through discussions of these topics by offering a retrospective view of several elements of the space industry in different time periods: development and operation of the Space Transportation System (STS, also known as the Space Shuttle), development of a commercial market for space technology, and issues facing NASA at the time it retired the STS.
Chief Kelly Bloom walked into his office to find the North Point Press on his desk with an oddly familiar story on the front-page – the leaked memo he had just sent out to his command staff yesterday. This case will help students to develop problem identification, potential solution development, and reflection skills.
Fostering Success launched an equity initiative to meet its ambitious goal of high school graduation parity in the surrounding county. A consultant led the agency through several required trainings and in starting an Equity Team.
This case is useful in an educational policy class, undergraduate level policy course, or graduate public policy courses in which students are learning about how stakeholder mapping and advocacy coalitions can help with managing the policy agenda.
This case allows students to imagine themselves within the role of a representative and decision maker carrying out a policy design process in a highly-sensitive and challenging economic and political environment.
By 2011, Korean society suffered from pervasive social disorder, including a high suicide rate, troubled schools, murder and other crime, deepening unemployment and poverty. As a policy response to these serious social ills, Seoul’s Mayor Park Won-soon offered community building as a solution to the problems, moving away from government-directed uniform solutions to citizen-led solutions.
Executive Director Lundberg has a new five-year contract, but must deal with a board that is divided over the use of the school’s land, only a small portion of which is actually needed for the school’s facilities. A showdown is brewing...
This case follows an ongoing leadership challenge within a small volunteer-dependent non-profit crisis support organization called the Corvallis Crisis Line (CCL), and the impact of poor management on vulnerable agencies. The Corvallis Crisis Line is an anonymous crisis phone line staffed by volunteer community members who participate in extensive training around active listening, appropriate intervention, and service referral for local community resources. The primary protagonist in this case is the current acting Board President and former long-time volunteer of CCL, Charles Bowden, who is working to maintain consistency and leadership for the organization after a series of poor hiring decisions made by the former board.
The case enables classroom discussion and analysis of volunteer and personnel management, authorizing environments, the effect of poor decision-making, and how community partnerships can impact small organizations. Courses focused on organizational performance, human resources management, program administration, and strategic communication can utilize this case. Students can richly explore mapping and analyzing authorizing environments, professional relationship dynamics, and bridging communication challenges.
The case is based on real events at a real organization. All names and locations have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.
CFLs pose potential environmental, health, and safety risks, but are a necessity. What do we do about products, or practices, that have obvious benefits and yet also pose some risks? What is “acceptable risk” in a democratic society? And who decides?
Should the consumer have the "right to know", or are nanotech food labels unnecessary and unhelpful?
After 5 cyclist fatalities in 16 months, city leaders decided something needed to be done.
This E-PARCC award-winning case chronicles Seattle’s effort in 2014 to become the first major city in the country to pass a law raising its minimum wage to $15 per hour. It’s told from the perspective of protagonist Ed Murray, the newly elected Mayor of Seattle who attempts to broker a deal by assembling a large and diverse committee of affected stakeholders to write the law.
Learning objectives for this case exercise are:
1. To provide the students with a decision support tool to support the discussion of trade-offs between readiness/mission capacity achieved (MCA) and LCC when making large-scale capacity investment decisions in the public sector,
2. To develop and support a proposal for cost reduction or mission capacity improvement with quantitative analysis,
3. To understand the sensitivity of capital investment decisions to the capital discount rate selected when computing the net present value (NPV) of the LCC,
4. To understand the trade-off between cost risk (probability that the LCC will exceed a certain budgeted threshold value) and readiness risk (probability that MCA will fall below a mission-planning threshold).
Mayor Nickels had a simple goal: he wanted to try to end all forms of racism in the workforce and the city. The city of Seattle, however, was 70% white and like many cities across the United States, had a history of explicitly racist policies and practices.
This piece proposes mapping as one way to generate frames that contribute to situational awareness. It presents a collection of maps that illustrate visual methods to simplify the environment and clarify distinct dimensions and relations among actors that influence purposive judgment. Mapping clarifies and organizes the dynamic world of actors linked to achieving purpose or mission.
“We are tired of being marginalized. We are tired of being the last community to get anything, to receive anything, to be spoken to, to be asked about, to be taken care of” - South Park resident. How will county officials navigate the controversial closure of the South Park Bridge?
This case allows students to learn about organizational change, teamwork, and capacities by providing an enthralling scenario, which provides opportunities to discuss ways to lead organizational change, how teamwork can be an integral and fundamental part of an organization, and ways to identify, expand, and prioritize organizational capacities. “Rescuing Search and Rescue” should be taught near the beginning of the course.
This case is designed to illustrate the difficulties of working to improve customer service in a resource-challenged setting with little or no formal authority.
This fictional collage is based on actual incidents and situations observed by the author in human service agencies in different jurisdictions. The case has been taught in a course broadly concerned with the development of information systems for government and nonprofit organizations. The course approaches the topic from three perspectives: 1. The systems thinking tradition; 2. Principles of data architecture; 3. Challenges of software development methodology.
This case study presents the instructor with a wide range of topics to which the case can be applied and around which it can be used as a basis for discussion such as: ethics, public policy, administrative law, citizen participation in local governance, public human resource management, intergovernmental relations, governmental budgeting, organizational behavior, and research methods.
This case's key focus is on the management of personnel and systems and building program capacity within the constraints of a bureaucratic agency.
This case describes the founding and growth of 23andMe, uptake of its services, questions raised by medical experts about the associations made in its tests, and regulatory issues raised in Congressional hearings and by the FDA.
Two potential Ebola patients have just arrived at the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Go through this Case and corresponding Role Playing Exercise to make reccomendations for how each stakeholder should interact in this situation.
In the course of a series of investigations into scientific fraud and misconduct involving Nobel laureate David Baltimore and research scientist Thereza Imanishi-Kari, new policies were established in the United States and internationally. The case asks whether Baltimore should resign as president of Rockefeller University. His short tenure had been rocked by controversy over allegations concerning a publication from 1986 in the leading journal, Cell. Although Baltimore himself was never accused of misconduct or data manipulation, investigations into the underlying data led to questions about his role as co-author.
The overarching goal of this case is to step away, for a moment, from Payatas and comprehend the challenges of urban waste management in developing countries. These public health, environmental, and management problems are caused by various factors which constrain the development of effective solid waste management systems. With this mindset, students should be able to discuss how Payatas was able to overcome technical, financial, institutional, economic, and social constrains.
In this role-play exercise, students will decide how to allocate operational funds to implement programs. Programs should be aligned with mission and organizational goals set by the board of a new health oriented nonprofit. Each group has three roles – an Executive Director, a Nutrition Program Director and a Sports Program Director. The Executive Director will seek input from program directors about how to spend money, but makes the final decision about how to allocate funds.
This case addresses issues of economic development for urban renewal in the post-industrial city of Baltimore. It focuses on commercial real estate development as one policy tool and stimulates readers to develop their own conclusions about its success.
The marketplace for information on nonprofits is growing. It involves competition for donor attention as well as for nonprofit participation. This variety of systems can be quite confusing, leading nonprofits and donors alike to wonder: What would be the most effective system? What kind of information do donors really want, and what kind of system would lower the barriers to nonprofit participation?
This case demonstrates the complexity of and challenges to managing contracted social service networks. It can be used in undergraduate or graduate nonprofit and public management courses. This case can also be used to supplement discussion of the following topics: federal government devolution of service production and the emergence of the Hollow State; nonprofit utilization of government funding; mission driven management; network management; networks with diverse stakeholders; and geographically dispersed networks.
This ethics-related case focuses on documented corruption in a county sheriff’s department. It is well suited for use with the traditional discussion question approach or for use as a Case Analysis exercise or assignment.
This case should first get students to think about the multifaceted nature of sustainable development decisions and assess the various constituencies and incentive structures involved. Second, the case raises some counterintuitive questions and encourages students to challenge their preconceived ideas. Lastly, after reading the case, students should be able to discuss the role that energy plays in economic growth and sustainable development.
This case presents a macro view of the decision-making process that Kenya’s Ministry of Energy underwent to address recurrent blackouts in Nairobi specifically, and the remainder of Kenya, generally.
As the director of the economic development division, you have been charged with selecting a new sustainable development specialist. How can you bring in new ideas and energy to your department?
This case study explores the various dimensions and challenges of developing Baja California state’s first wind farm and illustrates the energy dilemma faced by a region experiencing high electricity costs due to climate, detachment from the national grid, and an incompatible national energy regulatory structure. The case addresses multiple pillars of sustainability.
This case explores the Brazilian city of Curitiba in its pursuit of sustainability through urban planning and development, referencing flood management control, recycling programs, and bus rapid transit specifically.
This case focuses on the Singaporean government’s strategy for implementing smart grid technology as a means to further empower its energy dependent modern economy. The Intelligent Energy System (IES), a Singaporean government led smart grid pilot project, can be seen as a part of a long term urban development plan to: invest in critical energy infrastructure ahead of demand to make markets more efficient, open new areas for economic development, and strengthen the energy security. This case discusses the rationales behind the IES project, the government’s aspiration to be a ‘sustainable living lab’ in a global context, and its implications for other countries and megacities. As a city-state Singapore has similar capacity and significance of megacities that are progressively seen as substantial economies by themselves able pursue individual infrastructure development towards sustainability with global impacts.
Mr Modi, Indian PM candidate, leads the development of GIFT, a smart city and global finance hub with high quality of life and green infrastructure. Success for the GIFT PPP means balancing private and public interests. Built from scratch, GIFT must attract industry and people to be sustainable.
The case is designed to highlight the role of the REC in addressing cross-boundary water issues in two specific projects and to discuss the reasons why the organization has taken the role of intermediary and secretariat, as opposed to taking on more of an action-oriented role. The most important lesson the readers should glean from this case is that cross-boundary sustainability issues require more process-based approaches than cases where just one city or country is involved. The text box on the Pilot Harju Sub-river Basin Project in Estonia should spark discussion regarding these differences.
Further, the stakeholders’ perceptions of an issue are extremely important and contribute to the success or failure in resolving the problem. From Bulgaria’s perspective, the Timok River degradation was seen primarily as a Serbian problem. As a result, the onus to complete the project fell almost entirely on Serbia. In addition, because the mining industry was responsible for most of the point-source pollution of the Timok River Basin, the problem was seen as a mining issue. When the project ended, no other stakeholders came forward to continue to seek solutions. The Drina River pollution, on the other hand, involved three countries, several cities, and many local communities, all of whom had a stake in managing waste and keeping the river clean. Even when the initial project was terminated, other international actors, such as the World Bank and Oxfam, deemed the issue significant enough to initiate projects on their own.
This case study examines the structure of an organizational network as a way to create cities resilient to climate change. It take a look at the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network and presents different methods used to create network sustainability specifically how the network planned to replicate its work from city to city and from country to country. This replication process is essential to ACCCRN's model of success and depends on organizations functioning at the local, country, and regional levels.
This case is designed to illustrate the challenges associated with urban infrastructure development as they relate to the transportation sector and public-private partnerships (PPPs). Jakarta’s monorail provides an excellent example of the trials and tribulations facing decision makers in this context. Resolving infrastructure logjams in developing countries is messy: local institutions cannot always manage a transparent and competitive bidding process, while the range of bidders is constrained by the existing vested interests in the public and private sectors. The prospects for a sustainable solution may be limited in this context. However, in a difficult business environment, certain PPP structures can still succeed with strong government support and a robust risk mitigation strategy. Given all of the complexity in developing countries, strong political leadership and the strategic alignment of actors and interests can produce results, imperfect as these results may be. For now, Mr. Soeryadjaya’s eagerness to tap into Jakarta’s infrastructure market and public support for public transit have placed the monorail project on solid ground.
This case explores the incentives guiding a P3 transit company in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire after the government (its primary stakeholders) collapses. As a main tool for post-conflict recovery, the company attempts to address growing needs around public transit as well as its own financial setbacks.
Technological advances in hydrofracturing have spurred an oil drilling frenzy around the town of Willston, ND. The community has seen it all before: oil executives arrive, drill, make promises about community development, but leave the town with nothing in the end. Will this boom be different?
This case examines the development challenges facing Haiti’s energy industry in the wake of the 2010 earthquake. A top policymaker considers environmental, social, and economic factors to determine whether liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports could solve the country’s electricity problems.
This case study addresses issues related to water, sanitation, institutional capacity building, and storm water drainage. It analyzes efforts by the World Bank and DWASA to improve storm water drainage, institutional performance, and sewerage systems in Dhaka.
This case study explores the various dimensions and challenges surrounding the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The case emphasizes multiple pillars of sustainability.
This case urges the reader to consider the links between the competing priorities of sustainable development, infrastructure, and globalization using the Colombo Port Expansion Project (CPEP) as an example.
This case study focuses on the rollout of an ambitious bio-toilet initiative by the CEO of one of New Delhi’s civic bodies to tackle the problem of poor sanitation in the city’s slums. Many competing and complex factors come into play when attempting to develop new infrastructure at scale.
This case looks at sustainability and suitability of large-scale ‘green’ tree planting efforts in combating desertification, sandstorms, and air quality issues in urban China. Case focuses on progress in Zhangbei County to examine local implementation of national environmental projects.
This case study explores flood management in Jakarta and its implications on the affected communities. The case highlights issues related to the role of key decision makers, hard and soft infrastructure solutions, interagency coordination, and mitigating the risks of resettlement.
Changes in São Paulo’s rainfall patterns and increased usage from growing urbanization have greatly stressed water availability. Historically low dam levels in the Cantareira system have prompted calls for the government to ration water, however the upcoming elections have compelled the government to pursue other demand and supply side options. With the 2014 World Cup approaching its opening in São Paulo, the government faces both local and international pressure to alleviate its scarcity issues permanently, with a few financial and political costs as possible.
This case provides an overview of the challenges facing the electricity sector in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and explores various strategies implemented by Rio’s main electricity provider to overcome high non-technical loss rates.
This case study uses the Maboneng Precinct, a mixed-use creative hub in downtown Johannesburg, to understand better the role of a private sector developer in urban development and to explore the concepts of urban regeneration, gentrification, and sustainability.
The central theme of this case study is that cities facing drastically distinct development challenges may still pursue similar sustainable solutions. In pursuing the same objective of re-densification, the cities are considering similar strategies: rezoning and redefined land use, enhanced public transportation, and green urban infrastructure, to name a few. This case ends by prompting students to consider these strategies: which are the most important for achieving re-densification?
Quito’s rapid income and population growth over the past several years has forced its mayor to address the problem of how its citizens efficiently commute throughout the city. The existing public transportation system can no longer accommodate the city’s growing population. As a result, Quito’s mayor is building the city’s first metro system, an ambitious project, which is not only constrained by economics, but also by the city’s physical characteristic, surrounded by the Andes.
This case addresses the development of the Jiuquan Wind Farm in China. Readers will make a decision on the future of Chinese wind power investment, given the technical, financial, and environmental challenges facing large-scale renewable energy.
Rwanda has seen remarkable economic growth. However, food security remains a challenge in its rapidly modernizing capital city, Kigali. This case explores if an urban agriculture program can address the complex drivers of food insecurity in Kigali.
In this case, the definition of sustainable is based on how the energy is produced and does not consider public or environmental prosperity. Through this we see that just because something carries the label of sustainable development, it doesn’t make it a good thing— it can make many relevant actors worse off than they were before. This case brings the reader to consider how varied motivations for implementing a sustainable development project may not always be environmental protection.
This case is focused on the urban forest in Washington D.C. It examines the evolving understanding on the role that trees play in cities and discusses the administration’s target of expanding the city’s urban forest canopy to 40% by 2032.
This ethics-related case focuses on violations of the state’s Sunshine Law by city council members via their email communications. While this is a violation that is easily committed without intent, it invokes suspicions of more serious wrongdoing and is, in fact, illegal. When charges are filed and the members of the council are called into court to face a judge, the seriousness of the matter becomes real and ultimately leads to fines and resignations for and among leaders in a small city already facing serious problems throughout its leadership.
This case examines Santiago’s effort to combat air pollution by installing catalytic converters on all consumer vehicles particle filters on its buses. These policies have successfully reduced air pollution from these sources in Santiago but have not significantly reduced air pollution as a whole.
This case study focuses on decision-making from an applied perspective in a national policy priority area where the issue is salient to the public yet scientific evidence and projections are quite controversial. It simulates policy analysis and examines legislative process through the application of several analytic tools. Tackling climate change threats requires sophisticated policy design, and that design must account for complex scientific modeling and uncertainty about magnitude and timing of negative environmental effects. Such analytic challenges are compounded by lay skepticism and entrenched political and economic conflict from many interest groups. This environment should be understood as limiting options in policy design and shaping legislative outcomes.
This case demonstrates most clearly the challenges to starting and sustaining a collaborative partnership. By examining the different steps that the Eight Neighbors partnership has taken between September 2008 and August 2010, this case also highlights the potential benefits and challenges to tackling community-wide issues with an approach that involves different sectors and a diverse set of stakeholders.
The five mini-cases on ethics in managerial decision-making are intended to portray real life managerial dilemmas in a way that will help students develop frameworks for addressing those dilemmas.
Over the past decade, immigrant rights organizations in several states seized the opportunity to shift their advocacy efforts from a narrow focus on reform of the nation’s immigration laws to a broader platform of improved immigrant integration into American society. This meant an expansion of policy focus into all aspects of immigrant life, including education, health care, and employment opportunities.
This case illustrates the struggles of a well established nonprofit to understand its financial position after expanding its real estate and long-term debt just prior to the Great Recession.
This two-day simulation focuses on the negotiation of controversial and complex issues related to the 2,000-mile border that separates and joins the United States and Mexico as neighbors. Originally designed for an Introduction to Latin American & Latino Studies course, the simulation can also be used in other academic settings to highlight the complexity of international negotiations, to help students identify with a non-U.S. perspective, and/or to showcase the practical and emotional implications of theoretical foreign policy.