Leadership

"Almost a Worst-Case Scenario": The Baltimore Tunnel Fire of 2001 (B)

Publication Date: September 01, 2004

In the late afternoon of a hot day in July, 2001, an accident beneath the streets of Baltimore threatened to turn into a disaster. A freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed and caught fire inside a tunnel that ran beneath one of the...

"Almost a Worst-Case Scenario": The Baltimore Tunnel Fire of 2001 (A)

Publication Date: September 01, 2004

In the late afternoon of a hot day in July, 2001, an accident beneath the streets of Baltimore threatened to turn into a disaster. A freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed and caught fire inside a tunnel that ran beneath one of the...

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...

"Dealing with the Devil": The Tobacco Control Negotiations of 1997-98

Publication Date: March 25, 2004

The decade of the 1990s was one of increasingly bitter public criticism of the major US tobacco companies on the part of a number of anti-tobacco advocacy groups, who were collectively known as the tobacco control movement. In their zeal to...

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...

The New Hampshire Landslide Warning

Publication Date: February 01, 2004

This case describes a situation (based on actual events, but disguised in this telling) in which city officials receive a warning that as a result of persistent snow followed by rain, there is a significant probability of a major landslide from...

Drug Testing at North City High School (B)

Publication Date: February 01, 2004

This fictionalized two-part case describes a standard policy analysis problem that arises in screening using imperfect tests. It poses the challenge faced by a school principal about whether drug testing for students should be ordered. Under...

Drug Testing at North City High School (A)

Publication Date: February 01, 2004

This fictionalized two-part case describes a standard policy analysis problem that arises in screening using imperfect tests. It poses the challenge faced by a school principal about whether drug testing for students should be ordered. Under...

A Duty to Leak?

Publication Date: February 01, 2004

This case describes the challenge faced by the executive director of a (disguised) human rights watchdog agency. The state wants to increase the number of inmates in its prisons (without increasing the size of the facilities). This requires the...

Convener or Player? The World Economic Forum and Davos

Publication Date: January 01, 2004

The Swiss alpine resort Davos became, during the last quarter of the 20th century, synonymous with a conference which made possible informal conversations amongst some of the world's most successful and influential people. Over time, global...

Robust Web of Corruption: Peru's Intelligence Chief Vladimiro Montesinos

Publication Date: November 01, 2003

In 1990, President Alberto Fujimori swept to power in Peru on a wave of public enthusiasm for his promised reforms. Indeed, over the next five years Fujimori accomplished something of an economic turnaround miracle. He also vanquished a...

Neighborhood Conservation Services of Barberton: Responding to Change in the Magic City

Publication Date: November 01, 2003

In the late 1990s, the leadership of Neighborhood Conservation Services (NCS) of Barberton, Ohio--a nonprofit housing rehabilitation organization founded two decades earlier to help reverse the decline of this aging industrial city--found its...