Case Studies in Social Entrepreneurship

The oikos collection Vol. 4

Michael Pirson, Michael Pirson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351287661
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book is an essential resource for the increasing number of facilitators who wish to help students learn about the promise and pitfalls of social enterprise. The oikos-Ashoka case competition for social entrepreneurship was conceived in 2007 as a way to help find great material and case studies in this emerging field.

This fourth collection of oikos case studies is based on the winning cases from the 2010 to 2014 annual case competitions. These cases have been highly praised because they provide excellent learning opportunities, tell engaging stories, deal with recent situations, include quotations from key actors, are thought-provoking and controversial, require decision-making and provide clear take-aways.This new volume of social entrepreneurship case studies highlights cases from around the globe authored by teachers from around the globe. The selected cases span many industries and geographic contexts; nevertheless, they are connected by a shared ambition: to highlight the power of entrepreneurship to solve social problems.

The cases are clustered in three different sections: Socially oriented Enterprise Cases – Health and Fair trade, Ecologically oriented social enterprises, and Corporate Social Entrepreneurship. Case Studies in Social Entrepreneurship will be an essential purchase for educators and is likely to be a widely used as a course textbook at all levels of management education.

Online Teaching Notes to accompany each chapter areavailable on requestwith the purchase of the book.

Part I
Socially oriented enterprise cases

Health and fair trade

Case 1
Ndlovu

The clock ticks¹

Charles Corbett and Sarang Deo

Always when I come to Africa I’m sad about the useless death, the destruction and failures I see. Today I have seen that there is also hope. Ndlovu gives me a feeling I haven’t had for a long time being in Africa.

Sir Richard Branson, 2005 ²

Introduction

The phone rang. Dr Hugo Tempelman could not conceal his excitement when he saw the number. “That’s the call I’ve been waiting for!” After a short conversation, he hung up, and punched the air: “It’s official! This means hundreds, no thousands of jobs, and even more lives saved.” The phone call was from a representative of the Dutch Embassy in South Africa, awarding Hugo a grant of several million US$ over four years (with a guarantee for another four years if targets were met) to expand to other locations in South Africa the Ndlovu clinic and community development programs he had founded in the rural town of Elandsdoorn.

Visibly emotional for a moment, he then called his wife and collaborator, Liesje, to tell her the good news, ending with, “I know this is no time to celebrate yet, the work is just beginning.” Although Hugo was tremendously excited, he also felt a heavy burden. “Hundreds of people are depending on us to get this right,” he explained. He knew there were risks involved in reproducing something that he and Liesje had spent 15 years developing. What exactly should they replicate? What variation should they allow between locations, and what should be kept rigidly constant? What risks had he simply not thought of?

Hugo walked out to the clinic courtyard. As if to remind him of the gravity of their task, a hearse was being loaded with a recently deceased patient. Although such a sight was inevitable in a clinic, Hugo’s emotions showed again as he whispered, “We cannot celebrate today; this is a reminder of how much work we still have in front of us.”

Ndlovu: the beginnings

Born in the Netherlands in 1960, Hugo Tempelman earned his medical degree in 1990. Rather than becoming a specialist, he believed he could put his medical degree to better use in South Africa. His wife, Liesje, also liked the idea, so they moved to Groblersdal, two hours north-east of Johannesburg, and Hugo signed on as chief medical officer at the Philadelphia Hospital in nearby Dennilton. After three years he became Head of the Paramedical Services in the Department of Health of the former homeland KwaNdebele.

1994 was a watershed year for South Africa, with the first fully democratic elections after the end of the apartheid era. Hugo anticipated that he might be “too white” to continue having much impact in government service. He had noticed there were no private health care facilities in the general area. Following his dream to put his medical training to good use, he started his own private clinic to, in his words, “bring first-world health care to a third-world country.”

As Hugo recalled, “we took out a second mortgage on their home for 168,000 rand,³ bought 40,000 bricks, and planned to build a new clinic down the road from the hospital, in Elandsdoorn. On the first day of construction the builder didn’t show up. I thought, ‘What on earth am I doing?’ I engaged some people passing by who were eager for work, and the next day the builder showed up too.” By September 1994, the Ndlovu clinic opened for business with one doctor (Hugo), three employees, and Liesje handling procurement and finance. The first months were rough, with the bank asking for its money back, but by 1995, Ndlovu added a second doctor, and a third in 1997.

Most patients could not afford anything beyond primary care, so they had to be referred to the (free) government hospital for anything more. Despite this, Ndlovu expanded, first opening a nutritional unit, which was later moved to four off-site locations. A tuberculosis (TB) unit followed, growing from 94 patients in 1996 to 2,000 new patients in 2007. Hugo negotiated to get free TB drugs from the South African Department of Health in exchange for offering free care, making Ndlovu a rare non-governmental organization (NGO) in South Africa to have a formal partnership with the government.

When, in 1995, a Mkuhulu (respectable male elder) asked Hugo to bring him a postage stamp from Groblersdal, Hugo realized that Elandsdoorn had no post office. Hugo got the man his stamp, and got him a post office too. Inequality was still endemic in South Africa: two post offices served Groblersdal’s 5,000 white people, while Elandsdoorn Moutse, with its 160,000 blacks, had none. Hugo applied to open a post office branch within the clinic pharmacy, so residents could post their letters, send and receive faxes, and collect their aspirin and antibiotics all at once. One year of bureaucracy later, the post office opened, giving Elandsdoorn its very own zip code: 0485. The old Mkuhulu spoke for many when he said, “Thank you! Elandsdoorn is now on the map.”

Many patients, particularly those with HIV/AIDS, suffered from malnutrition. Hugo decided to help patients plant a variety of crops in their gardens to provide a balanced and nutritious diet. Hugo knew that bringing the necessary water to Elandsdoorn was not a high priority for the government. The lake behind the nearby Loskop Dam held five years of water supply for the farmers connected to the 640 km of canals flowing around Elandsdoorn, but not a drop went to the 160,000 residents.

Drinking water was also scarce in Elandsdoorn. As Liesje noted, “After school, our children swim, play soccer, hockey or cricket. The children from the townships are given a wheelbarrow and two 20-liter canisters to get water, often a 5–15 km walk away. This is their contribution to the daily struggle for survival.”

Hugo and Liesje initiated the Elandsdoorn Development Trust (EDT). Donations from individuals enabled 23 projects, where EDT paid for the installation, pumps, tanks, and 10 taps for each pipe, the community being responsible for maintenance. To illustrate the community’s commitment, Hugo asked, “Isn’t it incredible that these pumps have never been stolen or damaged, in a country infamous for its crime?” Walking down the street from the clinic, he pointed to one of the taps providing free drinking water. “If you try to mess with that tap, the people here will kill you,” he said, without exaggeration.

He summarized his approach: “We first gained the community’s confidence by providing health care, then we began to understand their other needs and started to fill them.” The success that Liesje and Hugo had been able to achieve was increasingly widely recognized. In 2005, they were named Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

The South African challenge

The two-hour drive from Johannesburg to Elandsdoorn (see Exhibit 2) begins with the N1 motorway traversing the glitzy shopping and residential area of Sandton that became Johannesburg’s new commercial district when many businesses (including the stock market) fled there from the central business district to escape the violent crime that followed the 1994 elections. The N1 continues north past Pretoria, the legislative capital, before exiting onto the R25, a two-lane highway through what feels like an endless savannah-like landscape despite the 120 km/hr speed limit. Except for the occasional baboon along the road, traffic is sparse.

The small town of Groblersdal is signposted from 100 km away, but the first signs of Elandsdoorn are the Ndlovu billboards (see Exhibit 3) with texts such as “Be Wise, Condomize,” and “Women, Don’t Let Your Men Dick-tate You.” This explicitness is in stark contrast with the government’s confused approach to HIV/AIDS education. “Some people have started referring to Elandsdoorn as ‘Condom City’,” laughed Hugo.

The R25 is Elandsdoorn’s only paved road; the Ndlovu Medical Center is on a dirt road. There are virtually no cars or bicycles. Single-storey homes line the roads, some built with brick, others more ramshackle. The few shops and eating establishments are almost indistinguishable from houses. By contrast, the mostly white town of Groblersdal, where Hugo and Liesje and most of the senior managers and doctors of the Ndlovu Medical Center live, has a full selection of shops, services, restaurants, and paved roads.

Elandsdoorn is typical of many rural communities in South Africa: very limited drinking water, no high quality health care facilities prior to Ndlovu, no decent educational facilities, and marginal infrastructure. About 20% of its people are infected with HIV/AIDS, of whom 60% also have tuberculosis (TB). Other diseases are rife, and malnutrition is widespread. Average income is below 10,500 rand⁴ per year, and unemployment is approximately 60%. The existence of a market for sputum from TB sufferers exemplifies the desperation and lack of education: people buy and swallow this sputum to be diagnosed as TB positive, which entitles them to some government aid.

The origins of this desperation are complex, and cannot be separated from the history of serial colonization and, subsequently, the “apartheid” regime that was in place from 1948 to 1994. The first Europeans to visit South Africa were the Portuguese in 1487. In 1652 the Dutch East India Company founded a small settlement, bringing slaves from Indonesia, Madagascar and India. During the 1800s the British gained control. The discoveries of diamonds in 1867 and gold in 1884 further spurred economic growth and immigration, but also drove the indigenous population into increased subjugation.

South Africa started to gain independence in 1910, but po...