MbO: Practical difficulties & how to avoid them

In our first article we discussed some of the difficulties that can happen when an MbO programme is installed in an organisation. We made a rough distinction between problems that are inherent in MbO as a system, and problems that are not necessarily part of MbO but which very often happen as a result of installing MbO. We made the assumption that the responsibility for the MbO programme has devolved on to someone in the personnel function, probably a trainer or management development officer, and that this person has to adapt an MbO programme so that his organisation can get the best use out of it. We are assuming that some fairly common problems have occurred and that these are restricting his operation — we are assuming that not all managers are committed to the programme, that its purposes are unclear, that ‘objectives’ are thought of as short‐term targets whose achievement is measurable in strictly numerical terms, and that the initial enthusiasm for MbO has worn off and the whole things is seen by many managers as being a paperwork exercise. We are also assuming that the loss of face and scrapping of forms which would result from abandoning MbO are unacceptable.