A Management by Objectives history and evolution

Remember MBA ware in the 90's? Well maybe you don't. How about management by objectives in the 50's, 60's and 70's? How about Deming and quality circles? What happened to those models for management and general productivity, and what does it have to do with project management today? The MBO model sort of came and then left, without leaving much of an overt or visible impression on most. Exited out by the downsizing and work group turmoil and market downturn of the early 90's. Organizational effectiveness was going to be accomplished by macro efforts, such as downsizing, not a style of managing, a way of organizing what topics and agenda to focus upon in a given day.

 

The premise of this article is that project management is an evolution of MBO theory, and in need of evolvement in specific directions itself. not necessarily more standardization. A second premise is that the previous models have all been eclipsed in history because their assumptions did not take into effect certain aspects in the workplace reality. The assumptions proved to be over time quite limiting, forcing the evolvement of management models with a new or improved set of assumption modifiers. The third premise is that the current model of project management is also limited by its assumptions, with recommendations for needed change and expansion to the model.