Browse Definitions :
Definition

management by objective (MBO)

TechTarget Contributor
By

Management by objective (MBO) is a model in which employees and their managers collaboratively develop, define and explicitly agree to objectives. The purpose of MBO is to increase employee productivity and efficiency and, as a result, corporate performance.

Business management expert Pete Drucker developed the concepts of management by objective in his 1954 book, The Practice of Management. Drucker also provided a best practice framework for establishing objectives. According to his SMART goals evaluation scheme, objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound.

Pete Drucker outlined the following five steps for implementing MBO:

1. Establish or clarify organizational objectives in line with the company's mission and vision.

2. Ensure that employees fully understand the objectives of the company as a whole.

3. Involve employees in determining their personal objectives to help achieve corporate goals.

4. Monitor and measure employee performance relative to the goals.

5. Evaluate progress, reward success and provide feedback.

Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, borrowed from management by objectives concepts to develop his OKRs (objectives and key results) model, often considered an agile version of MBO.

See John Doerr's presentation on the importance of setting goals:

This was last updated in September 2016

Continue Reading About management by objective (MBO)

SearchCompliance

  • information governance

    Information governance is a holistic approach to managing corporate information by implementing processes, roles, controls and ...

  • enterprise document management (EDM)

    Enterprise document management (EDM) is a strategy for overseeing an organization's paper and electronic documents so they can be...

  • risk assessment

    Risk assessment is the identification of hazards that could negatively impact an organization's ability to conduct business.

SearchSecurity

  • unified threat management (UTM)

    Unified threat management (UTM) describes an information security (infosec) system that provides a single point of protection ...

  • physical security

    Physical security is the protection of personnel, hardware, software, networks and data from physical actions and events that ...

  • attack vector

    An attack vector is a path or means by which an attacker or hacker can gain access to a computer or network server in order to ...

SearchHealthIT

SearchDisasterRecovery

  • risk mitigation

    Risk mitigation is a strategy to prepare for and lessen the effects of threats faced by a business.

  • call tree

    A call tree is a layered hierarchical communication model that is used to notify specific individuals of an event and coordinate ...

  • Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)

    Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) is the replication and hosting of physical or virtual servers by a third party to provide ...

SearchStorage

  • cloud storage

    Cloud storage is a service model in which data is transmitted and stored on remote storage systems, where it is maintained, ...

  • cloud testing

    Cloud testing is the process of using the cloud computing resources of a third-party service provider to test software ...

  • storage virtualization

    Storage virtualization is the pooling of physical storage from multiple storage devices into what appears to be a single storage ...

Close