Change Management

Parks and Partnership in New York City: The Spectrum of Engagement (B)

Publication Date: October 01, 2004

In a gradual but profound transition, New York's park system had become dependent on private partners. The private sector's involvement was pervasive by 2003, but came in very different forms. This case, a companion to Adrian Benepe's Challenge,...

A Change of Management

Publication Date: October 01, 2004

This case tells the story of the establishment and growth of public television in New Jersey, focused on the rise and fall of its first executive director, Lawrence Frymire. It implicitly raises the question of why Frymire--someone with a...

Parks and Partnership in New York City: Adrian Benepe's Challenge (A)

Publication Date: June 01, 2004

New York's public parks, brought to their magnificent peak by the legendary Parks Commissioner Robert Moses in the mid-20th-century heyday of direct government activism, were in disarray in a new era of public-sector austerity. As the City's...

Oxfam America: Becoming a Global Campaigning Organization

Publication Date: March 25, 2004

In 2000, Oxfam America, an international relief and development organization, launched itself on a bold new course. A small but respected agency, it had devoted itself for three decades to supporting partner organizations in developing countries...

A Letter to Professor Dutch Leonard

Publication Date: November 01, 2003

This letter to a Kennedy School faculty member from a former student is a plea for advice about one of the most difficult dilemmas faced by public employees in a bureaucratic chain of command: what to do when one thinks a new boss is moving an...

Urban Homesteading Assistance Board

Publication Date: October 01, 2003

Thirty years after its founding in 1973, New York City's Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB) found itself at a crossroads. The nonprofit, church-related organization that had long-provided tenants with assistance in renovating abandoned...

Winning Hearts and Minds: Reforming the Providence School District (B)

Publication Date: April 01, 2003

In August, 2002, Melody Johnson, the deputy superintendent of the Providence, Rhode Island School District, was hastily appointed acting superintendent in the wake of the resignation of her predecessor and close colleague Diana Lam. Lam and...

Winning Hearts and Minds: Reforming the Providence School District (A)

Publication Date: April 01, 2003

In August 2002, Melody Johnson, the deputy superintendent of the Providence, Rhode Island School District, was hastily appointed acting superintendent in the wake of the resignation of her predecessor and close colleague Diana Lam. Lam and...

Giving in the Wake of Terror: The Charitable Response to the Attacks of September 11

Publication Date: October 01, 2002

On September 11, 2001, after airplanes commandeered by terrorists crash into the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania countryside, Americans searching for an outlet for their horror and grief begin...

Standards for Child Sponsorship Agencies: Part B

Publication Date: October 01, 2002

In the spring of 1998, nonprofit agencies known as “child-sponsorship” organizations found themselves on the defensive. The agencies —dedicated to raising charitable funds in the United States to support children and their communities in poor,...

Standards for Child Sponsorship Agencies: Part A

Publication Date: October 01, 2002

In the spring of 1998, nonprofit agencies known as child-sponsorship organizations found themselves on the defensive. The agencies dedicated to raising charitable funds in the United States to support children and their communities in poor,...

Mayor Anthony Williams and Performance Management in Washington, DC

Publication Date: February 01, 2002

When Anthony Williams is elected mayor of Washington, DC in November 1998, he inherits a city that had been close to insolvency. Although its financial picture has improved, it has historically lacked the equipment and systems to deliver...