Resource Systems Institute. Cooperative Education and Training of Managers for Development Projects. MDP case history

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Contains a series of eight case histories covering agricultural, industrial, public works, and social sectors. Case history research has become a widespread instructional tool in medical and law schools, followed by schools of business, public administration, and engineering. These case histories are innovative, however, in representing the first attempt to construct a series of case analyses within a single conceptual framework--that of the development project as an integrated whole.

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    Career materials development project
    (Honolulu : East-West Resource Systems Institute, 1979-03) Ordoñez, Victor M.
    The Career Materials Development Project (CMDP) was started within the Graduate Guidance Center of De La Salle University, a private university in Manila, to help bridge the widening gap between actual employment opportunities in the Philippines and outputs of the nation's formal education system.
    In the course of its work, the Graduate Guidance Center had uncovered several possible ways of dealing with the country's problems of educated unemployment, of oversupply in some disciplines, and of severe undersupply in others. One method identified was to give high school graduates more information to help them make enlightened career choices. For this purpose, the development of career materials was essential.
    Accordingly, a half-private, half-governmental foundation, the Fund for Assistance to Private Education (FAPE) funded the Graduate Guidance Center to develop career materials. In 1972, with seed money from FAPE, the Center undertook an initial five-month experiment in career materials' production. At the end of this period, it felt ready to engage in a fullscale, three-stage project to develop a set of materials (Stage 1); field test, evaluate, and refine these materials (Stage 2); and then distribute them widely and ensure their mass utilization (Stage 3). A final Stage 4, greater mass distribution and development of still more materials, was also later requested by FAPE.
    Because of the broad scope of the project, the smaller semi-private FAPE persuaded the National Manpower and Youth Council (NMYC), a larger governmental agency within the Department of Labor, to take over funding of the project.
    Stages 1 and 2 took place in 1973-74, with a number of delays and midstream modifications, at De La Salle University. For these first two stages, FAPE acted as the middleman through which funds were channeled from NMYC to the project team at De La Salle. In fact, funds promised for release according to formal Memoranda of Agreement were not initially released by NMYC. First De La Salle, and then FAPE, ended up advancing project expenses to the team, only to be reimbursed by NMYC almost a year behind schedule.
    As a result, FAPE recommended that De La Salle deal with NMYC directly for Stage 3, scheduled to start in March 1975, and withdrew as go-between and interim funder of the project. In the meantime, Stage 3 had been expanded to include, besides distribution and utilization of previous outputs, the production and field testing of an entire second batch of materials as well. The negotiations and funding releases between NMYC and De La Salle were also the source of some delays, especially when actual mass printing was done by another government agency, the National Media Production Center.
    Placing the three stages of the Career Materials Development Project within the framework of the integrated project cycle, this case history follows closely the negotiations among a private university, a quasigovernmental foundation, and an agency in a government ministry regarding a project that changed both shape and scope several times in the course of its lifetime. Actual project documents--proposals, contract of services, and terminal reports--are provided in the Appendices for additional information.
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    Mandaluyong social condominium project : a case history in project development management
    (Honolulu : East-West Resource Systems Institute, 1981-04) Garilao, Ernesto
    The Mandaluyong Social Condominium Project (MSCP) of the Philippines is a p16,400,000 (U.S. $1.00 = Phil. p7.52 [June 1976]) workers' housing project funded by both the Social Security System (SSS) and the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) and administered by the latter.
    The project is designed to test and validate the social development approach in low-income housing through three major components: (1) providing housing to workers earning monthly incomes of p300 - 1,500 by reducing the costs of land and construction and by providing liberal financing terms; (2) establishing income-augmenting opportunities within the housing complex where trainable dependents of families earn additional income to meet their housing expenses; and (3) implementing community education, leadership, and management training programs to prepare the residents for owning and managing the housing complex within three to five years.
    This case history examines the assumptions made during the planning phase that affected project implementation and describes the difficulties involved in the process of organizing families into a self-reliant, self-directing community. Finally, it demonstrates that housing projects are for people; they are not merely physical designs. Consequently, such projects must be planned for people--taking into consideration their aspirations, preferences, and needs before any housing scheme mapped out on paper is translated into reality.
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    Bancom Institute of Development Technology
    (Honolulu : East-West Resource Systems Institute, 1981-03) Ordoñez, Victor M.
    This case history deals with a project launched by a group of companies headed by a private investment bank in the Philippines in its attempt to evolve a significant private sector formula for integrated rural area development.
    The Bancom Development Corporation, part of the Bancom Group of Companies, established a wholly owned, not-for-profit subsidiary called the Bancom Institute for Development Technology (Bidtech) in 1975 to explore human settlement management as a private enterprise activity. As personnel was recruited and as ideas and objectives crystallized, the focus of Bidtech became documenting the technology in Bancom and its various subsidiary companies, and then communicating and adapting this technology to the rural countryside.
    The case traces the activities of Bidtech's three divisions--documentation, communication, and application. Special attention is given to the application division, a subproject at a field site experimental setting in Licab, a town of 14,000, in a remote area about three hours north of Manila.
    The Bidtech team sent to Licab found the usual severe problems that beset a small rice-based Philippine village: heavy debts from overextended crop loans, low levels of health and education, a fatalistic attitude fostered by regular typhoons, droughts, infestations of field rats and plant disease, low community cooperation and morale. When it entered this situation, however, Bidtech was operating neither as a government agency with an appropriated budget nor as a Church-related or philanthropic group with a grant; it came rather from the private, profit-oriented (and therefore cost-efficiency conscious) tradition of its parent group of companies. Its goal was therefore to come up with new formulas that would guarantee not profit per se (since Bidtech was a nonprofit institute) but self-viability for the project and its overhead as soon as possible.

    Under the supervision of the Bidtech application function, training of local leadership started in earnest. With the help of a comprehensive framework, Bidtech soon involved itself in a wide range of community concerns, including hog breeding, bamboo craft and other cottage industries, town square beautification, a community preschool, street theater, a town newspaper, and so on.
    With failures reported as well as successes, and seeing no significant transformation in the town at large after several months, Bidtech management conducted a townwide meeting to assess the community's articulated needs and plans. Based partly on this four-day meeting, partly on outside expertise, and partly on the analysis of its own experience, Bancom and Bidtech management finally concluded that the only way to change the community significantly would be to touch its very lifeline, rice production. As a result, the field team concentrated its efforts on an outlying 60-family village of the town. With the introduction of technology, management, and motivation, it was able to triple rice production records and start to erase significant debts. The formula was gradually applied in other areas, and added income was used not only to cover all overhead but to support other community projects.
    The case traces the progress and difficulties of a private enterprise experiment in human settlement management, its organizational framework, information-reporting mechanisms, funding complexities, and attempts to apply sophisticated business management techniques to a rural. environment. Various aspects of this experience illustrate sometimes correct and sometimes incorrect ways of handling key managerial issues in the integrated project cycle.
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    Korean national family planning program
    (Honolulu : East-West Resource Systems Institute, 1981-02) Whang, In-Joung
    This case history evaluates the Korean Family Planning Program for the ten-year period from 1962 to 1971. Judged to be among the more successful of such programs in developing countries, it was established in 1961 as the principal means for implementing national population policy in the Korean government's first Five-Year Economic Development Plan. This guided change approach must, however, share credit for the demonstrated decline in the nation's birth rate with two other factors, each operating independently--induced abortion and marriage at a later age. The medical emphasis upon contraceptive controls, evidenced in the design phase of the Family Planning Program, is weighed against the social, cultural, and political forces operating in client communities, where communication and education toward attitudinal and behavioral change demanded more attention.
    Certain phenomena are identified as contributing critical input for planning and implementation in this program, with implications for other operations of like nature. For example, the program's integration with economic development planning by the central government is seen as complementing a later involvement with the nationwide community development movement at the rural or village level. Similarly, the centralization of responsibility among national planners for target definition and budgetary allocation is viewed as balancing the decentralization of specific program execution among local governments. The operational effectiveness of linkages between government offices and private organizations achieved at every level is characterized as vital to the program's success.
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    The Philippines' rice self-sufficiency program : 1966-68 and 1973-75
    (Honolulu : East-West Resource Systems Institute, 1981-01) Iglesias, Gabriel U.
    Achieving self-sufficiency in rice production has been one of the top priorities of the Philippine government. This case history discusses the government's two programs to attain this goal.
    The case is divided into two parts. Part 1 focuses on the 1966-68 program instituted soon after Ferdinand E. Marcos took over as president. This account discusses in detail the overall environment, program design, and implementation of the rice program, with special emphasis on production goal setting, marketing and distribution, field organization structure, and the framework for overall coordination and control. It brings out the numerous problems encountered at the various stages of the program; and the organizational and administrative steps taken to make this program yield significant results. The pivotal role of leadership in success of this program is also emphasized.
    Part 2 of the case describes a second rice self-sufficiency program, Masagana 99, launched in 1973. The two programs are similar in content and are strongly linked to each other. They have, however, entirely different political environments, behavioral components, and major explanatory variables. The 1973 program provides a longer-term perspective for the 1966-68 program and clarifies the nature of the project management cycle. In the context of rice production, attaining self-sufficiency is an ongoing effort and one that cannot be set aside with the achievement of original goals.
    Both rice self-sufficient programs are a complex of many subprograms and subprojects, requiring participation of many agencies. This case examines the administration of an interagency umbrella that coordinates, directs, and controls the operations of various agencies.
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    The Trans-Alaska Pipeline
    (Honolulu : East-West Resource Systems Institute, 1979-08) Geistauts, George ; Hauck, Vern
    This case history describes the conception, planning, and construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS). Originally conceived of by the owner oil companies as simply a means to move their newly discovered oil from a remote location to markets, the pipeline ultimately became a. project of great importance, in terms of both desirable and adverse consequences, to a variety of special interest groups and to every level of government. The expectations, pressures, and demands of these groups and of governmental bodies in effect converted a privately conceived and privately financed project into a quasi-public project. In the process the original design was significantly altered, the start of construction was delayed for years, and project costs escalated from an early estimate of approximately 900 million dollars to a final cost of nearly 8 billion dollars.
    Therefore this case history focuses on the TAPS project from two perspectives. One is concerned with the pipeline project itself: its conception, economic feasibility, technical feasibility and design, its planning and management, the actual construction sequence, and finally start-up of the oil flow through the pipeline. The other focuses on the efforts of the special interest groups (including government agencies) to shape the project so as to serve their needs, and on an evaluation of the results (impacts) of these efforts.
    Although the pipeline itself has been completed and is in operation, the total transportation system will not be completed until the means for transshipping oil eastward across the United States has been determined. In addition, the full impact of the project, both within Alaska and elsewhere, is still far from being understood. Thus the project is best viewed as one which represents the completion of a major component of a system, with the structure of the overall system and its effects not fully determined.
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    The Malia Coast Comprehensive Health Center
    (Honolulu : East-West Resource Systems Institute, 1978) Crocco, Nancy ; Miyabara, Tetsuo
    Malia, a poor rural community in the State of Hawaii, had no health facility; thus in the early 1950s Malia residents asked the federal government to assist them in building and operating a health center. From 1950 to 1970, the federal government provided Malia with no assistance. The Malia community, however, organized the Malia District comprehensive Health and Hospital Board, Inc. (Board). Composed totally of residents, the Board's purpose was to upgrade health care in Malia. Then in 1972, federal government agencies agreed to assist Malia. The Regional Medical Program, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and Model Cities each awarded grants to the Board to design, build and operate a neighborhood health center.
    To initiate the grants, the funding agencies recognized the Board as the official policy-making organization for the proposed health center; and the Board agreed to fulfill numerous reporting and monitoring conditions for each agency. The Board then hired a project director to design the health center. When completed, the design specified plans for the construction of a primary care building, and the implementation of a community-oriented health program. The initial project director then resigned, and the Board selected a new director to implement the health program. The new director was unable to establish effective working relations with the Board and he also resigned. The Board then hired the Board president, Edward Kahele, as the new project director.
    Although Kahele had the full support of the Board, he had neither the formal training nor the administrative experience to implement the health program. Consequently, he failed to accomplish key program goals. Operating and personnel policies were never finished; working agreements with hospitals and health providers were never established; the required prepaid health plan was never drawn up; and the health program was never expanded. The failure to accomplish these goals led the funding agencies to insist that Kahele be replaced with a qualified administrator. The Board, however, refused, feeling that the funding agencies were trying to gain direct control of the Center. An impasse resulted and the funding agencies cut off all operating funds. The Center was forced to close. After the closing, the Board agreed to the funding agencies stipulations and the Center was reopened. The Board then reorganized itself and hired a new project director.
    The Malia case history illustrates problems encountered by many projects. Some of these problems include conflicts between the indigenous community and the outside funding authority, organizational tension created by multiple funding sources, problems of coordination and supervision stemming from an inadequate design, and the antagonism between experts and lay policy-makers.
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    Quality management program development in a U.S. private industry
    (Honolulu : East-West Resource Systems Institute, 1978) Cotton, Frank E.
    This case deals with the development and implementation of a quality management control system in the Telecommunications Division of a Southern-based telephone equipment manufacturing company in the U.S.A. The plant assembled hand-set telephones through mass-production lines but had a relatively ineffective quality control program. The plant management therefore wanted to develop a system that would not only guarantee cost-effective quality but would also pinpoint when and where errors in production occurred. To achieve these objectives, a project team consisting of a private consultant, the manager of the Engineering Department, the manager of the Quality Control Department, and a quality control analyst was formed.
    The project team concentrated first on developing quality control procedures that would satisfy all objectives and at the same time be feasible in the mass production environment. Brainstorming sessions and group meetings were held with supervisors, workers, and division managers, both to gain their approval and inputs and to make sure that the program would not interfere with ongoing work procedures. When all personnel were satisfied with the program, a pilot test was initiated, using representative sections of the plant. When these tests proved extremely successful, the project team decided to use the test results to convince the plant manager to trial-test the program for the assembly section. After receiving his approval, the project team tested the program for a two-month period with successful results. The quality control program was then implemented on a permanent basis in the assembly section and was adapted as well to the fabrications section of the plant.
    The case illustrates how a private consultant coordinated all elements of the plant management in implementing the program. It further shows how planning and pretesting were aided by an open, participatory style of communication. The case not only provides substantive information about the development and implementation of a quality control system but also demonstrates the values of using a systematic approach to project management.
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