Thesis (Master in Management) -- University of the Philippines Mindanao, July 2021

Local Government Units play a critical role in a locality's pursuit of all-inclusive growth and self-reliance. It is mandated to protect and empower communities by building an enabling and sustainable environment where the citizenry would thrive and flourish. The LGU of the municipality of Bongao seats at the center of an administrative system since Bongao is the de-facto capital of the province of Tawi-Tawi. Therefore, it plays a key part in building local development linkages at the provincial and regional levels. However, LGU-Bongao is challenged with influences that need outright apprehensions. These circumstances include growing population, proximity to neighboring countries, environmental delineation, devolution conflicts, and poor socio-economic situations. On top of these, the LGU is internally struggling with heavy dependency on Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) funds. Thus, this study aims to explore the proliferation of Local Economic Enterprises (LEE) as the primary modality in addressing the internal and external issues that are hobbling the LGU-Bongao. A strategic management conceptual framework was developed to guide the overall process of this strategic plan, it adopts the principles of Problem Tree Analysis (PTA), Objective Tree Analysis (OTA), Decision Tree Analysis (DTA), and Stakeholder Analysis (SA). PTA gauged factors from the internal and external environmental scanning. The OTA was used for the development of strategic options and DTA was utilized to weigh the financial benefit of each strategic option. And DTA was utilized to weigh the financial benefit of each strategic option. The SA was conducted to identify the stakeholders involved in the PTA and OTA. Furthermore, in the DTA, Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) were used as criteria to evaluate the derived strategic options of this study. These are Local Development, Product or Service Development, and Organization Development Strategies. The Organization Development Strategy yielded the highest benefit with over Php 100 million NPV and 511% IRR; as compared to Local Development Strategy with over Php 74 million NPV and 384% IRR and Product or Service Development Strategy with over Php 5 million NPV and 43% IRR. The Organization Development Strategy also reflected the highest efficiency with regards to the impact flow based on the clustering of the OTA. In addition, the OTA has identified the institutionalization of the LEE department in the organizational structure of the LGU-Bongao as the key action in the strategic program. This will result in establishing LEE mechanisms that will address the sectoral issues and challenges that are expected to improve the socio-economic development of the locality and at the same time, strengthen the financial health of the LGU-Bongao. The implementation program consists of the deployment of the proposed activities and key resources in the major functional areas of management in the LGU?s operations, such as organization and human resource, operations and finance. And lastly, a monitoring and control system was developed. This will serve as an assessment system and control measure to guide the implementation of the proposed strategic actions in terms of achieving organizational goals. It is composed of Key Results Area (KRA), Key Performance Indicators (KPI), objectives, strategic action, tools, time frame, and responsible unit or persons.