The concept of management by objectives can be applied to academic institutions. A continual process for identifying goals, defining individual responsibilities, and using agreed-on measurements as guides and assessment tools, MBO's basic thrust is to push the decision-making process down through the organization. (Author/LBH)

Some of the most commonly asked questions about management by objectives are answered by an authority. They deal with implementation, effect on creativity, quantification, time involvement, effect on budget, personnel requirements, consultant services, and examples of institutions where MBO is used. (Author/LBH)

In the face of reduced resources, recommends a well-considered, productive approach to decision-making, rather than a reactive approach, in areas of increasing faculty productivity, reducing full-time faculty, assessing community needs, developing new resources, and evaluating management. (MB)

Based on personal experience of a non-university executive, suggestions are offered for management planning within the university. They include the premise that planning is essentially concerned with controlling and influencing the direction of change and that frustration often derives from difficulty in obtaining or influencing the direction of…

A management strategy that is potentially more fruitful for the nonprofit sector than traditional management toward a primary objective is a risk management approach to organizational effectiveness. The organization's effectiveness, its survival, can be analyzed by categorizing the risks facing it and assessing its performance in managing these…

Management development and training is a vehicle to help make higher education management more professional by working with institutions' own managers on institutional problems. An integrated, systematic program for management development created by the Higher Education Management Institute and the Exxon Education Foundation is recommended. (MSE)

This literature review considers definitions of strategic planning as well as historical and operational aspects of its use at community colleges. First, a number of definitions of strategic planning are presented, indicating that, compared to long-range planning, strategic planning is more action-oriented and more concerned with issues, the…

The 1960's and 1970's saw the development and expansion of a new type of educational administration/management that was heavily weighted toward a quantitative approach. Some feel that the advent of modern management techniques (Planning, Management, and Evaluation--PME, Management By Objectives--MBO, Management Information Systems--MIS) as applied…

A systematic approach to the management of higher education institutions is described. The methodology combines administration by objectives (ABO), a management technique that helps academic administrators structure decisions in a systematic manner, with goal programming (GP), a decision-science tool that is ideally suited to the analysis of…

This paper summarizes the methods used by a "developing institution" (Gadsden State Junior College) to arrive at an institution-wide system of long-range planning and management by objectives. A needs assessment identified the following areas which more systematic planning and management might address: a contraction of the college's resource base,…

Administrators from 32 public two-year community colleges were surveyed to reveal the extent to which Management by Objectives (MBO) programs affected organizational conditions; 200 questionnaires (71%) were returned. Approximately 65% of the administrators indicated that the MBO system did not change the amount of formal contact between superior…

The merger of the Tennessee State University's institutional research office and the planning, management, and evaluation offices is described. The roles of the institutional research office before the merger were the collection and dissemination of institutional data, storing of data collected from other sources, and conducting special studies.…

The way that modern management techniques contained in the Linking Elements Concept can be applied successfully to management in institutions of higher learning is considered. The Linking Elements Concept combines management science, management by objectives (MBO), and the behavioral sciences into an overall framework. The concept proposes that…

A nationwide longitudinal study was undertaken by the Higher Education Research Institute in Los Angeles to study the impact of Exxon Education Foundation's Resource Allocation Management Program on the 49 institutions receiving grants under the program. The focus was the behavioral consequences of management changes for administrators, staff, and…