TY - BOOK AU - San Diego-Oblepias, Teresita. AU - ED - ED - ED - ED - SN - 2 PY - 0000///46 CY - PB - KW - KW - 2 KW - 0 KW - 6 KW - 20 N1 - Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, 2004.;A dissertation presented to the faculty of the Graduate School of Management in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Business Administration; 5 N2 - Statement of the Problem This study entitled The Open Competition Policy for Cargo Handling Services in Selected Philippine Ports examined the impact of the said policy on the performance of ports where the policy is being implemented. It also determined the significance of the policy to the current vision and mission of the Philippine Ports Authority. The ports covered by the study are located in Manila-North Habor, Iloilo, Ormoc, Zamboanga and Davao. It attempted to answer the following explicit questions: 1. What is the impact of Open Competition Policy (OCP) on performance of ports where said policy is being implemented in terms of the following indicators: 1.1 Financial 1.1.1 financial investments; 1.1.2 Cargo handling firms' gross income; 1.1.3 Cargo handling firms' trust fund for port labor benefits; 1.1.4 PPA Port cargo handling gross revenue 1.1.5 PP Port investments; and 1.1.6 PPA Assets, Net Income & Return on Assets 1.2 Operational 1.2.1 Cargo handling technique's productivity rates; 1.2.2 Volume of cargo traffic; and 1.2.3 Number of ship traffic? 2. Is there a significant relation between the following variables with regard to the impact of Open Competition Policy on port performance? 2.1 CH firms' investment and their gross income; 2.2 CH firms' investment and trust fund for port labor benefits; 2.3 CH firms' investment and PPA Port CH gross revenue 2.4 PPA Port Investment and PPA Net Income 2.5 PPA Port Assets and Return on Asset 2.6 CH firms' investment and cargo traffic 2.7 CH firms' investment and ship traffic 2.8 CH technique's productivity rates and volume of cargo traffic 2.9 CH technique's productivity rates and ship traffic 3. What is the significance of the Open Competition Policy to the current vision and mission of the PPA in line with the following perspectives, as assessed by the groups of respondents of the study? 3.1 Financial perspective; 3.2 Internal business processes perspective; 3.3 Learning and growth perspective; and 3.4 Customer perspective? 4. What is the level of importance of the following problems encountered in the implementation of OCP, as assessed by the different groups of respondents in line with the following variables: 4.1 Policy formulation and system implementation, 4.2 Operational factors, 4.3 Socio-political factors; and 4.4 Financial and capital factors? 5. Are there significant differences in the assessment of the different groups of respondents on the problems encountered in the implementation of OCP in terms of the aforecited variables? 6. What program of actions can be recommended to the PPA relative to the improvement of the implementation of OCP for cargo handling services? Hypotheses The research tested the following null hypotheses at 0.05 margin of error (95% level of confidence): 1. There is no significant relation between the following variables with regard to the impact on port performance of the implementation of OCP: 1.1 CH firms' investment and their gross income; 1.2 CH firms' investment and trust fund for port labor benefits; 1.3 CH firms' investment and PPA Port CH gross revenue 1.4 PPA Port Investment and PPA Net Income 1.5 PPA Port Assets and Return on Asset 1.6 CH firms' investment and cargo traffic 1.7 CH firms' investment and ship traffic 1.8 CH technique's productivity rates and volume of cargo traffic 1.9 CH technique's productivity rates and ship traffic 2. There are no significant differences in the assessment of the different groups of respondents of the study with respect to the level of importance of problems encountered in the implementation of OCP in line with the following variables: 2.1 Policy formulation and system implementation; 2.2 Operational factors; 2.3 Socio-political factors; and 2.4 Financial and capital factors Research Design The study utilized the descriptive and correlation types of research. The research instruments used were the compilation of financial, statistical and operational data gathered from PPA and CH firms, survey questionnaires and unstructured interviews. Specifically, the records analyzed were the annual financial statements of CH firms, Annual Operational Performance Reports, Annual Port Statistical Reports, Port Financial Reports and other relevant documents for the years 1997-2002. The investigation was made on the five ports of PPA, namely Ports of North Harbor, Iloilo, Ormoc, Zamboanga, and Davao. The respondents were PPA officials and officers, cargo handling firms' managers and supervisors and shipping companies officials and alternate port representatives at the five ports. They were identified on the basis of their work position, involvement and knowledge about the objectives of Open Competition Policy and actual implementation of said policy. The entire population was 222 personnel. The researcher did not use any sampling technique in drawing the sample size, because she used the entire population or 100% of the 222 respondents. Two types of survey questionnaires were developed and applied in gathering data. One type is the Delphi survey and the other is non-Delphi survey. For non-Delphi survey, two sets of questionnaires were developed and used. One set for PPA Group and CH firms group and another set for the port users' group. For the Delphi survey respondents, five sets of initial survey questionnaires were developed per port location where the respondents were stationed. The five sets were for expert respondents from North Harbor, Iloilo, Ormoc, Zamboanga and Davao. Each questionnaire was designed for specific operational situations obtaining in the port. In the iterated survey questionnaire, only four sets were constructed and applied. North Harbor port was eliminated because of the unified or converged opinions submitted by the experts from the first survey. Unstructured interviews were made with selected respondents to obtain clarifications with respect to data gathered from survey and compiled operational and financial records. Findings and Conclusions With respect to the impact of OC policy in financial and operational performances, the study found that OCP worked favorably in ports where more than two operators were allowed to operate. Stronger completion existed. Thus, Ch firms laid out more financial investments to improve their capital equipment, technology and services to secure loyalties of existing customers or entice new clients. In terms if CH gross income and PPA gross revenue, the policy also worked favorably in ports where substantial volume of international traffic is handled by the port, because of higher tariff for handling this type of cargo, thereby increasing the gross income of CH firms and gross revenue of PPA. In ports with only two operators, the amount of financial investment laid down by the CH firms was considerably lower than in ports where more than two operate. However, they generated gross income and PPA correspondingly obtained gross revenue due to tariff increases. All of the five ports serve captive markets. Thus, the CH operating there at did not exert much effort in marketing the port to entice new shippers or users in order to increase the port cargo and ship traffics. The CH firms were complacent about their market shares since only two are serving said market. They also did not invest much since their gross income increased despite either low or no further significant investment. CH firms either lack adequate to invest in all types of cargo handling services. They concentrated most of their investments in handling containerized cargo thereby affecting the performance of non-containerized cargo handling services. This further affected the operational performance because the shipcalls and berth occupancy were found to be low. In line with significance of OCP to current vision and mission of PPA, the learning and growth perspective strongly supported its linkages to the organizational goal and objectives. Internal business perspective objectives were found to have problems because except for improvement of containerized cargo handling productivity rates, all other objectives did not perform well based on the standards set by the experts.; However, the customers' perspective proved to be of significant support to the policy. The financial perspective supported the organizational goal and objectives because of the very strong performance in gross revenue generation. Overall, despite the poor support displayed by the internal business perspective, the balance scorecard clearly illustrated that OCP is an important policy that can support vision and mission of PPA. In regard to the assessment of encountered problems, the study revealed that problems relating to policy formulation or implementation, operational factors and capital and financial related problems were perceived by respondents to be all important. Thus, PPA needs giving necessary attention within reasonable period of time to the identified problems in order to further improve the support being provided by the OCP to the current organizational goal and objectives. The only problem found to be less important was the socio-political problem. Though some problems within socio-political factor existed, the same did not hamper the implementation of the policy. However, PPA may conduct further study on this factor to rule out the current finding. Two other problems emerged in the study based on the opinions given by respondents to the survey questionnaire. One was related to fixed tariff, which was found to be the reason why CH firms did not undertake port marketing. The other problem was the short contract tenure granted to CH firms, which was found to be associated to the CH operators' reluctance in making further investments. The program of actions needed in the improvement of implementation of CH services include the following: increasing th ER -