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Mayoral Transitions: How Three Mayors Stepped into the Role, in Their Own Words

Publication Date: February 29, 2024

New mayors face distinct challenges as they assume office. In these vignettes depicting three types of mayoral transitions, explore how new leaders can make the most of their first one hundred days by asserting their authority and...

Mayor Curtatone’s Culture of Curiosity: Building Data Capabilities at Somerville City Hall

Publication Date: February 21, 2024

For sixteen years, longer than any mayor in the city’s history, Mayor Joseph Curtatone has led his hometown of Somerville, Massachusetts. The case begins in January 2020 when the mayor is looking ahead at his recently won,...

Leadership in Moral Conflict Simone Veil and Abortion Reform in France

Publication Date: April 1, 2003

This case tells the 1974 story of a French health minister, Simone Veil, and her ultimately successful effort to liberalize France's abortion law. It serves as a vehicle for exploring leadership in a legislative setting, in this instance a...

Fallen Idol? Aung San Suu Kyi & the Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis Epilogue

Publication Date: January 25, 2024

This epilogue accompanies, "Fallen Idol? Aung San Suu Kyi & the Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis," HKS Case Number 2139.0. Soon after Myanmar’s longtime democracy crusader and opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was...

Holding Environments and Public Problem-Solving

Publication Date: December 12, 2023

Problem-solving spaces are everywhere. Whether in a hospital operating room, on a construction site, or in an academic department meeting, groups and teams convene to ensure problems are managed and reliable services are delivered. The problems...

Leading Pension Reform in Rhode Island: Building Holding Environments to Achieve Change

Publication Date: December 12, 2023

In 2010, Rhode Island’s public employee pension system was on the verge of collapse: it was just 48% funded and represented a $4.7 billion liability – the largest such pension liability in the nation. For many state employees and...

Climate Resilience in New York City: The Battle over East River Park

Publication Date: November 28, 2023

What makes climate change different as a policy challenge? Why is it so hard to solve? And how can we balance the need for the right technical solutions with the importance of having the process be as democratic and participatory as possible?The...

Reckoning with History: Confederate Monuments in American Cities (Abridged)

Publication Date: November 15, 2023

This is an abridged version of case 2235.0. Abstract: When the Reverend Clementa Pinckney and eight worshipers were massacred during bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, a widely...

Reckoning with History: Confederate Monuments in American Cities

Publication Date: March 3, 2023

When the Reverend Clementa Pinckney and eight worshipers were massacred during bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, a widely circulated photograph showed Dylann Roof, the white...

Integrating Systems at Scale: Coordinating Health Care in Houston

Publication Date: November 8, 2023

 This case concerns the Patient Care Intervention Center (PCIC) a values-based health technology social enterprise in Houston, Texas. This organization was founded to tackle fundamental problems in social and health services in the United...

Implementing the Inflation Reduction Act: Can the Tax Code Transform American Energy?

Publication Date: October 17, 2023

 On August 16, 2022, President Joseph Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). The wide-ranging law included provisions for lowering prescription drug costs, expanding the Internal Revenue Service, subsidizing the...

Nothing Can Prepare You for This Job: Germany’s Health Minister Faces Tough Decisions during COVID-19

Publication Date: September 24, 2023

This case and video supplement recount three high-profile public health decisions that German Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, made during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: how to procure masks, which vaccines to procure (and how many...