Dear SAE 550 Class Members-- Many students find the homework for Case Study #9 to be the most difficult assignment! You will have to be a bit more flexible with your FOL analysis than for prior assignments. Oh, I don't mean that you'll have to "spin doctor" your answers, but by now you may have noticed that the FOLs are often NOT independent! All of the FOLs are derived from the fundamental equation MONEY = POLITICS. So it should not be surprising that the FOLs are "coupled". For example, many repercussions of FOL #4 (Technical Problems Become Political Problems) become a FOL #3 (Strong/Coherent Constituency) driver. And yes, yes... I know that I told you that FOL #1 and FOL #5 are the result of different political processes... but those processed are closely related. In short, look at EACH of the events in Case Study #9, and examine them from the potential perspective of EACH of the FOLs. For any particular event, one (or two) FOLs will be prominent... but the other FOLs may be more weakly present. It may be a bit of a "stretch" to use these weaker implications, but you will find them necessary to complete this particular assignment. And YES, you can re-use any particular incident in Case Study #9 for more than one FOL analysis (e.g. for FOL #1, #2, etc.) Dr. Elliot Axelband axelband@rand.org axelband@usc.edu Ken Cureton (TA) cureton@usc.edu