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Management by Objectives

This report examines the managements technique known as Management by Objective (MBO), with particular consideration of the procedure for instituting an MBO program in a salesoriented organization.

Management by Objectives, or MBO, means, in its simplest terms, exactly what the name implies: so managing as to direct organizational efforts towards the achievement of specific goals. So stated, it sounds both simple and obvious, but it is often difficult to put into practice, as suggested by the popular saying that "when you're up to your neck in alligators, it's difficult to remember that your objective was to drain the swamp." All too often, managers find themselves neckdeep or deeper in immediate problems and crises, and overall objectives, which seem so distant, get lost sight of. The art of Management by Objective, then, is to keep managers and the organization as a whole on track towards its goal, even when the "alligators" are snapping all about.

Management by Objectives must, in some form at least, be nearly five thousand years old at least. No ancient Egyptian inscribed management theory in heiroglyphics, but the proof is simple: someone established a goal, directed an organization to achieve that goal, and did in fact achieve it. The Pyramids are proof of this, standing there for all to see.

As a consciously formulated concept, however, MBO is somewhat more recent. The term was first used by management consultant Peter Drucker in 1954, and the concept has been

continually refined since that time.1 The need for specifically formulated concepts of MBO grew out of the rapid progress of industry after World War II, and particularly out of the growth of major industrial projects, following in the footsteps of the World War II Manhattan Project which developed the atomic bomb. Earlier, the need for defining objectives was perhaps less obvious. Steel mills produced steel, railroads ran tra...

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Management by Objectives. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:09, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1705547.html