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Can Educators be Motivated by Management by Objective Systems in Academia?

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Abstract

The Management by Objective (MBO) system was widely discredited by the 1980s as not delivering on its promises of efficiency, worker motivation, etc. Now some universities around the world seek to employ such a system for faculty evaluation. This paper comments on the reasons the MBO was largely abandoned in the business world, provides the use of the MBO in Korean education as a case study of current use, and gives suggestions of the conditions under which the MBO or similar evaluation systems would likely be disastrous in an academic environment. This is followed by a series of criteria that a fair and equitable faculty evaluation system should have.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. Research, for example, is not intended only to create some interesting results “now,” but push the profession and human knowledge forward, which is a forward-thinking, long-run goal.

  2. This division between compliant and non-compliant members of the faculty refers only to issues related to faculty job performance on which they will be evaluated, such as what has earlier been referred to as the university’s “goals of appearance.” It does not refer to normal operating mandates, research grant performance requirement, and the like. Neither does it suggest that faculty members should not “follow the rules” of their university.

  3. Yonsei University is one of the three S.K.Y. schools in Korea, Seoul National, Korea University, and Yonsei. These are considered the best universities in the ROK by Koreans.

  4. http://www.postech.ac.kr/e/research/background.html

  5. Idem.

  6. As an example, the MBO has been seen in clinical education, where medical professors in imaging work at least at one university under an MBO system (Pearson 1991). As another example, the first Bush Administration wanted to adopt an MBO system (Blustein 1989). Perhaps one can ignore such adoptions so soon after the MBO was discredited, but it is even more shocking that new MBO systems are being implemented much more recently.

  7. The Deming approach, and specifically not the MBO, was one suggestion, for example, as a better basis for the merit pay system at Fairfield University in the United States. (Whether their merit pay system is simply “an MBO by another name” is a matter for another study and likely a matter of some debate.)

  8. The name of the university and source of the information is kept confidential to protect the faculty member who provided the information.

  9. These strengths and weaknesses given in Tipton (2007) were adapted from Bartol, Kathryn, Margaret Tein, Graham Matthews, and David Martin. Management: A Pacific Rim Focus. McGraw-Hill. 2003.

  10. The transparency proposed here is between the university and the faculty member being evaluated. It is not intended to suggest transparency to others, as that would violate privacy of the individual faculty member.

  11. This moral advice was given in Mater et Magistra. Papal Encyclical of John XXIII. 1961. Nota bene: The sources for moral advice here are several Papal encyclicals. This is not intended to give a denominational flavor to the paper. They were instead chosen because they are widely-known writings of widely-known figures who speak on morality.

  12. Idem.

  13. These suggestions on morality were given in Rerum Novarum. Papal Encyclical of Leo XIII.

  14. Advice taken from Quadragesimo Anno. Papal Encyclical of Pius XI. 1931.

  15. Suggestions from Mater et Magistra. Papal Encyclical of John XXIII. 1961.

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  1. SolBridge International School of Business, Daejeon, South Korea

    Rutherford Johnson

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  1. Rutherford Johnson
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Correspondence to Rutherford Johnson.

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Johnson, R. Can Educators be Motivated by Management by Objective Systems in Academia?. J Acad Ethics 9, 1–18 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-011-9127-2

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