• Integrating Systems at Scale: Coordinating Health Care in Houston

    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 States. It was initially focused on homeless superusers of the health system, that received inadequate care at high cost, notably through frequent use of emergency rooms. However, it became clear that this was only a symptom of broader system issues, especially around coordination failures across siloed health and social services and failures in case management. PCIC designed an approach that integrated two innovative features: values-based client diagnosis and case management, based on the values, concerns, and aspirations of individual clients, and a platform-based approach to sharing data both on clients and services, with tailored technological solutions for individual health and social organizations. It has been highly successful both in outreach and contract growth. By 2022, 850 agencies were providing data, involving six million individuals, with some 1,500 referrals within the system each month within the Houston area. However, PCIC faced challenges in further scaling, with respect to finance for developmental needs, human resources, and the threat of competition from large private players that offered platforms that were significantly inferior in terms of tackling the underlying system failures, but potentially attractive to health and social organizations. The case frames both the strategic questions for PCIC and the challenges of changing an essentially dysfunctional system. HKS Case No. 2271.0
    詳細資料
  • Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator: A Model for Reducing Unemployment in South Africa

    In the fourth quarter of 2021, South Africa's unemployment rate rose to 35%, the highest since 2008. Though some of the job losses could be attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic, the country had already been experiencing high unemployment due to a slow growing economy. The news was worse for the country's youth. Of the 20.6 million people aged 15 to 34 years, 44.7% were neither employed nor in an education or a training program. South Africa's 2030 National Development Plan called for the creation of 11 million jobs between 2010 and 2030. This meant adding 600,000 jobs per year, but the country's economy had only produced 250,000 jobs per year, on average, between 2010 and 2020. In South Africa, young, first-time, job-seekers faced multiple hurdles to finding employment. Youth often lacked job-readiness skills-the behavioral and personal readiness to find and keep a job-and had low formal educational attainment, causing employers to be wary of hiring. In addi-tion, the country's minimum wage was a high proportion of average occupational salaries, providing further disincentives for employers to hire inexperienced workers. Also, workers in South Africa enjoyed significant legal protections to prevent unfair terminations, so employers risked incurring high costs associated with retaining workers later found to be unsuitable. Employers often tried to lower their risk by recruiting over-qualified or over-educated workers, which entrenched exclusion. During its first ten years, Harambee worked to match youth to jobs. The organization analyzed a job to define the specific competencies required, recruited excluded young people and tested them to determine if they possessed those competencies and if so, effected a match. If they did not have the competencies, defined the gap and determine the fastest, most efficient way to train them and move them into the job. This approach led to the organization's initial success but by 2016, its leaders recognized that it was imperative
    詳細資料
  • In the Cold Light of Day: A Case Study of Argentina's 2001-2002 Economic Crisis

    Argentina's macroeconomic crisis of 2001-02 is a classic case of the interaction between exchange rate policy, fiscal policy, banking and external finance. It makes for a highly engaging teaching case because of its many layers. It was at one level a product of the hard peg of the Argentine currency to the dollar, and the loss of competitiveness with changing international conditions. The proximate cause of crisis was a run on reserves and bank deposits and dramatically country risk premium. But these symptoms were also intricately linked to fiscal policy, to IMF policy, to financial conditions and to Argentina's underlying political economy. The case is designed as a simulation, focused on the key moment of end-November 2001, with roles of Domingo Cavallo (Minister of Finance), the Argentine industry association, representatives of households, and the IMF. Students have to get inside the role to understand and defend the position of each group, drawing on tailored background material for each role. Case number 2086.0
    詳細資料