Ndlovu: The clock ticks!
By Charles Corbett, Sarang Deo, Hugo Tempelman, Mariette Slabbert
Oikos Foundation | 2010
DOI
oikos-international.org/publications/ndlovu-the-clock-ticks/
Citation
Corbett, Charles., Deo, Sarang., Tempelman, Hugo., Slabbert, Mariette. Ndlovu: The clock ticks! Oikos Foundation oikos-international.org/publications/ndlovu-the-clock-ticks/.
Copyright
Oikos Foundation, 2010
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Abstract
This case discusses the situation at Ndlovu Care Group (NCG) in July 2008. The group, founded by Dutch social entrepreneur Dr Hugo Tempelman, has been running a very successful health care facility – Ndlovu Medical Center (NMC) – in the township of Elandsdoorn in rural South Africa. The case discusses NCG’s plans to expand that success to other locations in the country. At the time of the case, Dr Tempelman had just received a major grant from the Dutch embassy in South Africa to fund his expansion plans. This provides a perfect opportunity to discuss questions about how to replicate an intricate organization that has taken some 15 years to build, and whether that is even possible; what management structure is needed to oversee that replication; what risks are involved and how they might be mitigated. The need to balance increased professionalization with maintaining the founder’s passion runs as a thread through the case.

Sarang Deo is a Professor of Operations Management at the Indian School of Business (ISB), where he also serves as the Deputy Dean for Faculty and Research and as the Executive Director of the Max Institute of Healthcare Management (MIHM).

His primary area of research is health care delivery systems. He is interested in investigating the impact of operations decisions on population-level health outcomes. Some of the healthcare contexts that he has studied include the influenza vaccine supply chain and the phenomenon of ambulance diversion in the US, HIV early infant diagnosis networks in sub-Saharan Africa, and formal and informal pathways for tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis in India. He regularly collaborates with international public health funding and implementation agencies such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), and PATH for his research. He currently serves as a member of the WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on TB (STAG-TB).

Prior to joining ISB, Professor Deo was an Assistant Professor at the Kellogg School of Management. He holds a PhD from UCLA Anderson School of Management, an MBA from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, and a B Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. Before entering academia, he worked with Accenture as a management consultant.

Sarang Deo
Sarang Deo