This case is an epilogue to "Wilderness Safaris: Impact Investing and Ecotourism Conservation in Africa" (2-321-020), which ends with the emergence of the pandemic in March 2020. The final discussion area for that case can be "What should Wilderness Safari CEO Keith Vincent do to confront the challenges of the pandemic?" This case documents, in the CEO's own words, what actions and plans Vincent and the company had taken or formulated as of July 2020. The areas covered are: Governance and Decision Making, Cash Management, People, Communities, Travel Agencies and Customers, Conservation, Reopening, and Investor Reactions and Future Projects. The case is only five pages, so it could be used as an in-class handout after the discussion of the previous case, with the follow-up class discussion taking place then, if sufficient time is available, or in the subsequent class. The focus of the discussion is on the students' analysis and evaluation of Vincent's actions and plans. The case particularly offers learning opportunities for risk assessment, leadership, and management in crisis situations.
On January 11, 2006, residents of New Orleans's Broadmoor neighborhood, which still bore the deep scars left by Hurricane Katrina, were shocked by the headlines in The Times-Picayune. The Urban Planning Committee of a mayoral commission charged with developing a reconstruction plan for the hurricane-ravaged city had proposed giving hard-hit neighborhoods like Broadmoor four months to prove that they were still viable and, hence, worth rebuilding. Worse still, the paper had printed a composite map, drawn from the committee's report, which showed six green dots indicating low-lying areas that could be turned into parks and "greenspace." One of those green dots covered Broadmoor. Incensed at what they viewed as a betrayal by their own city government, Broadmoor residents who had returned to salvage their flood-damaged homes began to consider how to save their neighborhood from the bulldozers. Their efforts quickly coalesced around the Broadmoor Improvement Association-a venerable neighborhood organization-and a determination to create their own plan for recovery. A core group of residents-many of whom had never met each other and none of whom had ever worked on a redevelopment plan-would take the lead in organizing the planning process for the still-scattered community.
On January 11, 2006, residents of New Orleans's Broadmoor neighborhood, which still bore the deep scars left by Hurricane Katrina, were shocked by the headlines in The Times-Picayune. The Urban Planning Committee of a mayoral commission charged with developing a reconstruction plan for the hurricane-ravaged city had proposed giving hard-hit neighborhoods like Broadmoor four months to prove that they were still viable and, hence, worth rebuilding. Worse still, the paper had printed a composite map, drawn from the committee's report, which showed six green dots indicating low-lying areas that could be turned into parks and "greenspace." One of those green dots covered Broadmoor. Incensed at what they viewed as a betrayal by their own city government, Broadmoor residents who had returned to salvage their flood-damaged homes began to consider how to save their neighborhood from the bulldozers. Their efforts quickly coalesced around the Broadmoor Improvement Association-a venerable neighborhood organization-and a determination to create their own plan for recovery. A core group of residents-many of whom had never met each other and none of whom had ever worked on a redevelopment plan-would take the lead in organizing the planning process for the still-scattered community.
Notwithstanding its reputation as a free market bastion, Hong Kong has long been home to a well-developed, government-supported "social sector." Although many non-governmental social service organizations began as purely private and charitable, the government, over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, began to pay an increasing share of their budgets through payments known as "subventions." In the mid-1990s, however, the leaders of nonprofit social service organizations become increasingly concerned that the conditions under which their organizations receive public support-including pay scales, job descriptions, and staffing levels set by the government-allowed too little management flexibility. This case describes the evolution of a replacement "subvention" system one which, instead of providing support for specific positions and supplies, would instead provide the social service nonprofits with "lump sum" grants-a single pot which NGO managers would apportion. The case details the complexity of planning and implementing such a transition, focusing among other things on the transition arrangements required to ensure continuity of services and minimum of workforce disruption. The government must deal specifically with fears of senior social workers that the new system will give managers an incentive to replace them with new, more junior hires. In addition to allowing for discussion of the specific dilemmas faced in Hong Kong, the case can be a point of departure for a more general discussion about the variety of imaginable relationships between the public and nonprofit sectors and how such arrangements are, as a practical matter, effected. HKS Case Number 1630.0
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, high atop a great many of the older, concrete-block buildings of lower-income parts of central Hong Kong and the neighborhoods of the Kowloon peninsula, informal metal-framed wooden structures were built to house thousands of the city's families in austere, though inexpensive, quarters. These "illegal rooftop structures" comprised what could be a called a shantytown of the air, one made up of structures which, though built illegally, were nonetheless bought, sold, and rented on the open market. Such structures, moreover, were just one example of the larger phenomenon of so-called unauthorized building works in Hong Kong. These UBWs, as they were known in the city's Buildings Department, included balconies added to windows-sometimes used for beds on which people slept high in the air-as well as hundreds of thousands of storefront street signs and canopy extensions to the ground floors of buildings in commercial districts, the latter used to create spaces rented to stores and restaurants. By 1999, it was estimated that UBWs of all kinds in Hong Kong totaled a staggering 800,000. By one estimate, if authorities continued enforcement as they had been doing, it would take more than 130 years to effect the removal of all such structures-assuming that new ones were not built in their place. This case raises the thorny question of the extent to which and methods by which Hong Kong should use the law to minimize or eliminate such unauthorized building works-in a city where some parts of the public care most about public safety, while others-often much poorer-care most about shelter. HKS Case Number 1631.0