International Development/Social Impact Cases

Question

Hi everyone,

I am currently looking at interviewing at an international development consultancy firm and was wondering if anyone would like to do some case practice surrounding social impact/international development topics?

Answer 1

Hi Mariam!

As you embark on the nonprofit/int Dev/social impact, keep in mind the following way of approaching these case types:

My approach

Public sector cases are tricky because they feasibly be any case type (Product Launch - new service for citizens; M&A - merging two departments; even Profitability - cost cutting mandate). For any public sector case, I recommend:

First identifying the type of case it is.
Second, leverage your knowledge of the public sector as constraints/considerations.

Considerations/Constraints

Regards #2, you know that public perception is particularly important to consider in any public sector move. Additionally, you can count on bureacracy/slowness in implementation. You should identify the goal/mission of the organisation as well and keep this top of mind (if it loses money, but achieves it's goal of helping the poor, no problem). Howvever, just because the government sector doesn't have profit as a target, doesn't mean you should ignore the profit tree altogether - governments are still obliged to take into costs (and sometimes revneues) in decisions (example: setting up a public transport initiative). Don't get tricked into thinking you can't consider the economics of the case!

Other items to consider include, but are not limited to:

Politlcal landscape (i.e. upcoming elections, special interest groups)
Sustainability
Private-public partnerships
International vs governmental vs state vs local partnerships/alignment
Income = taxes/budgetary landscape
Digitialization of government

Framework Resource

In terms of resources, the UPenn Wharton 2011 casebook has a framework for public sector. It's split into:

Strategic rationale (Mission of organisation and stakeholder reactions)
Deal economics (planned investment and returns, if any)
Other (Required capabilities and risks)

Practice Cases

If you want some practice cases:

Tepper 2008's "NGO Effectiveness"
Colombia 2011's "MadeCasse"

Hope this helps, and please don't hesitate to ask any follow-up/clarifying questions!

Answer 2

Hi Mariam,

I can help you with a few cases on internal development and social impact cases.

I'm actually quite fond of the topic and have a post-grad degree in international development.

Feel free to reach out!
Best,

Cristian

Answer 3

Hi there, don't worry! You can get into MBB (and most other consulting firms) without any business degree. For ma... (read entire answer)

Hi there, don't worry! You can get into MBB (and most other consulting firms) without any business degree. For many years, the head of McK Germany was a theologist, I believ... (read entire answer)