PRINCIPLES AND PROCESSES OF DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT

ASSIGNMENT

1. What is your understanding on the concept of development management?

What I understand about the concept of development management is that, it is a process of

managing development of a certain area as part of governance in achieving goals and objectives
in improving its social and economic state. This process is done locally and globally by
transformational leaders who are committed to give their best efforts to combat various social
and economic issues that can lead to unsustainable development as well as with the participation
of various government bodies and interventions involving range of individuals. In order for these
leaders and innovators to realize the process of social change, part of their deliberate effort in
development management involves planning and adoption of various policies in order to provide
holistic solutions to problems encountered that can negatively affect progress.

3. Do you think non-economic factors like culture, religion, political stability, climate change and
others affect the development management of a country?

Definitely yes. Such non-economic factors are still part of the society being the subject of
development management. These factors cannot be ignored and independently treated upon
during the process. Culture and religion of the people in a community has an important impact
on how the community behave and act toward activities and processes of development because
their culture and religion shapes the identity of the society as whole, since societies have
considerable potential for economic development, such as discipline and positive attitudes
towards work, capital accumulation, production, and the quantity and quality of consumption are
in a better position to become economically developed than those which are deprived of these
attitudes. On the part of religion, there are a wide range of religious world views and various
religious attitudes to material life. Some religions have considered economic activities as an
important aspect of life, though they are a means for spiritual growth rather than an aim and, in
contrast, some religions recommend their followers to have an ascetic life. Moreover, political
stability as well greatly affects development management of a country through its planning stages

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and policy formulation and implementation. When one country has a stable politics, it suggest
that it has a better design and implementation of its social and economic policies that would be
a positive result of better and improved economic performance. When we talk about climate
change, there is no question that this long term issue affects the development management of a
country. This issue is the most significant challenge to achieving sustainable development, and it
threatens to drag millions of people into poverty. It is indeed a challenging factor which bugs
leaders and policy makers trying to improve the condition of our lives.

5.Differentiate economic growth from economic development. Give an example of an

economically growing economy and an economically developed country.

Economic Growth is a narrower concept than economic development. It is an increase in a

country's real level of national output which can be caused by an increase in the quality of
resources, quantity of resources & improvements in technology, or an increase in the value of
goods and services produced by every sector of the economy. Economic Growth can be
measured by an increase in a country's GDP (gross domestic product).

On the other hand, Economic development is a normative concept. It applies in the context
of people's sense of morality (right and wrong, good and bad). The definition of economic
development given by Michael Todaro is an increase in living standards, improvement in self-
esteem needs and freedom from oppression as well as a greater choice. The most accurate
method of measuring development is the Human Development Index which takes into account
the literacy rates & life expectancy which affects productivity and could lead to Economic
Growth. It also leads to the creation of more opportunities in the sectors of education,
healthcare, employment and the conservation of the environment. It implies an increase in the
per capita income of every citizen.

Economic Growth does not take into account the size of the informal economy. The informal
economy is also known as the black economy which is unrecorded economic activity.
Development alleviates people from low standards of living into proper employment with
suitable shelter. Economic Growth does not take into account the depletion of natural resources
which might lead to pollution, congestion & disease. Development however is concerned with

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sustainability which means meeting the needs of the present without compromising future
needs. These environmental effects are becoming more of a problem for Governments now
that the pressure has increased on them due to Global warming.

Economic growth is a necessary but not sufficient condition of economic development.

According to the website-World Population Review, the United States of America ranked first
in terms of GDP with calculated economic growth of $21,410,230. However, according to the
2018 statistical update of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human
Development Report, Norway was considered as the most developed country, having garnered
the highest HDI value of 0.953, while the United States of America only ranked 13th in the list.
This implies that people in Norway are more secured, happier and have better quality of life as
a whole compared to the United States of America despite the latter having garnered the
highest GDP.

4. How do you assess or evaluate the management of economic development? When do we say
that an organization is able to attain its development objectives?

Management of economic development can be assessed and evaluated through various process
of monitoring whether or not the organization is able to attain its development objectives. We
may infer that development is both a physical reality and a state of mind in which society has,
through some combination of social, economic, and institutional processes, secured the means
for obtaining a better life. Whatever the specific components of this better life, development in
all societies is said to have attained its development objectives if it is able to increase the
availability and widen the distribution of basic life-sustaining goods such as food, shelter, health,
and protection, able to raise levels of living, including, in addition to higher incomes, the provision
of more jobs, better education, and greater attention to cultural and human values, all of which
will serve not only to enhance material well- being but also to generate greater individual and
national self-esteem and be able to expand the range of economic and social choices available to
individuals and nations by freeing them from servitude and dependence, not only in relation to
other people and nation-states, but also to the forces of ignorance and human misery.

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6. Explain the three objectives of development according to Michael Todaro.

Michael Todaro’s objectives of development are all geared toward the betterment of the quality
of human life more than just economic growth per se. His three objectives focus on (1) life
sustaining goods, (2) levels of living, and (3) freedom. The first objective is “to increase the
availability and widen the distribution of life-sustaining goods such as food, shelter, health and
protection.” Provision of basic needs is almost always the first reason why man needs a job, or
in a larger scale, why a country finds ways to improve or develop its economy. A country should
always seek to provide life sustaining goods to its people first before anything else since they are
one of the most important resources for further economic development. The second objective is
“to raise levels of living, in addition to higher incomes, the provision of more jobs, better
education, and greater attention to cultural and humanistic values, all of which will serve not only
to enhance material well-being but also to generate greater individual and national self-esteem.”
If the first objective deals somewhat with survivability, this second objective deals with
sustainability. This second objective of Todaro is saying that economic development should not
only seek to “give a man a fish” (first objective) but move from that to “teach a man to fish” so
that “you feed him for a lifetime.” Take note that included here is not just the raising of incomes
or provision of more jobs but most importantly, the provision of better education. Eventually, the
more educated people are in a country, the more likely for that country to develop. The third
objective is “to expand the range of economic and social choices available to individuals and
nations by freeing them from servitude and dependence not only in relation to other people and
nation-states but also to the forces of ignorance and human misery.” The last objective talks
about how economic development liberates the people by providing the tools they need to break
free from “servitude and dependence” and from “the forces of ignorance and misery.” A truly
economically developed country is not seen in the country’s economy in itself but one has to look
at the lives of the people. Do they have the choice to improve their lives if they want to? Do they
have the tools to be able to do this?

9. What is globalization? Why is it a growing trend? Do you agree that not opening up means
being left behind?

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Globalization, according to Kolb (2019), is the word used to describe the growing interdependence
of the world’s economies, cultures, and populations, brought about by cross-border trade in goods
and services, technology, and flows of investment, people, and information. In the context of
economy, globalization would simply mean that countries take their businesses to a global or
international scale. Globalization in terms of economic interdependence has been a growing trend
since countries have been specializing in their trade and would prefer to obtain the products that
they are not capable to produce from other countries. Philippines’ top export are integrated
circuits, South Korea’s would be electronic products (i.e. Samsung, etc), and Japan’s would be
vehicles. Taking these countries as an example, Philippines is better off importing electronic
products from Korea and vehicles from Japan. On the other hand, other countries might prefer
to import integrated circuits from the Philippines since it might be more practical and cost-
effective to import them than to produce them. We can see in this example that countries start
to become interdependent with each other which makes globalization a growing trend. For a
country not to open up to globalization might mean being left behind and there are a couple of
factors that affect how much a country opens up to the world. Politics is one and North Korea is
an example. Culture is also one factor that may slow down/prevent globalization which may also
mean culture/identity preservation which is not a bad thing.

12. In a developing country like the Philippines, what do you think is the best economic growth
model in which the country would adopt to reach economic take-off? Defend your answer.

Since the early years of the post-World War II period, the Philippine government has prepared
socioeconomic plans to guide its development. These plans spelled out the visions of development
of the population, the goals to be attained, the strategies for attaining them, and the instruments
for the goals’ successful realization. On the average, there have been two such plans every
decade. Representative plans include the Rehabilitation Plan for the 1950s; the Socio-Economic
Development Plan for the 1960s; the Development Plan for the 1970s; the Poverty Eradication
Plan for the 1980s; the Human Development Plan for the 1990s; and the Good Governance Plan

during the initial years of the 21st century. No doubt these plans have been the products of the
innate intelligence and perspicacity of the planners, especially in the early years, but perhaps,
they have been influenced by growth models.

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All the growth models obviously emphasized growth, since this was their main concern to begin
with. Growth was to be seen in production or output in deer, beaver, and corn in the old days, or
the gross domestic product in the contemporary period. Proponents of these models all agreed
that to generate output, inputs were necessary, namely, labor, land, and capital. They also agreed
that increasing inputs would generate increased output, but they also knew that the increased
input would run into diminishing returns. The classical model saw labor becoming abundant in
the course of development and land becoming scarce. Consequently, wages tended toward
subsistence level while land rents tended toward the sky. The neoclassical model changed the
focus of the prognostication from land to capital and, later, to technology. The Harrod-Domar
model said that to enable an economy to grow, the country needed investment, which had to
come from domestic saving. The challenge was to raise the saving rate to generate an investment
rate that would assure attainment of the targeted growth rate of output. The model referred to
the incremental capital-output ratio, which is the quantity of additional capital needed to produce
the additional output; and balanced growth, where output and capital are growing at the same
rate as technically augmented labor. In the more general rendering of Solow, the growth model
saw labor productivity as being dependent on the capital-labor ratio. The more capital per worker,
the better until the steady state is reached. The output per worker and the capital-labor ratio
would be growing at the same rate as technical progress.

In other words, all these economic growth models have greatly influenced the development
planning and implementation in the Philippines. At bottom, the general direction of strategy as
well as the relative effectiveness of instruments for the achievement of goals can be deduced
from growth models. Whatever economic growth model to adopt, the success depends on the
systematic and intelligible construction of the plan which arise from orderliness of thought. In the
Philippines, planning and implementing authorities correctly regard the plan as “indicative” and
not “commanding,” a program for non- interference in the dynamics of market forces. However,
noninterference has often been interpreted to mean “to do nothing at all.” As a result, the
situation is not that there is “too much” intervention in the workings of the market arising from
imperatives of development plans but that there is “too little.” What seems needed today is
intervention at two levels: articulation and actual execution. The private sector, domestic and
foreign, if not the people as a whole, certainly can benefit from a more careful articulation of
policies, plans and programs. The high authorities can reinforce this through moral suasion and
demonstration. On their part, the line departments must perform their duty with greater

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determination. They can accelerate efforts to create those elements of the economic environment
that the market needs in order to function well—the physical infrastructure (e.g., transportation,
communication, public works), social overhead (e.g., medical facilities, schools), social services
(e.g., resettlement, housing), and political services (strengthened bureaucracy, law
enforcement), and so forth. Such ways of intervening will most certainly improve the workings of
the market. To be more successful in plan implementation, the government at both staff and line
levels must articulate the plan more carefully and carry out infrastructural and other supportive
programs with greater determination. These efforts will most help invigorate the market.

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