African Journal of Business Management Vol. 6(5), pp. 1772-1786,8 February, 2012 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/AJBM DOI: 10.5897/AJBM10.1585 ISSN 1993-8233 ©2012 Academic Journals Review Half a century of management by objectives (MBO): A review Grigorios Kyriakopoulos School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Electric Power Division, Photometry Laboratory, 9 Heroon Polytechniou St., GR-157 80 Athens, Greece. E-mail:
[email protected]. Accepted 14 June, 2011 This review paper presents the second half of the 20th century research of Management by objectives (MBO) approach. The relevant research is spanning over the last five decades and an approach to position representative common characteristics of this wide spectrum of studies, is implemented through their grouping into 15 main areas of application. The presented studies were analyzed, revealing the favourable areas of application by using the MBO approach. Among 82 literature survey, it is found that the main area of MBO application is in the medical sector. The four main medical sub- groupings of healthcare, that is, healthcare, nursing, hospital management and hospital pharmacy account for 40% of the total references. The paper also denotes determining factors of potential MBO malfunction, such as the observing distortion between MBO introductory structure and its function in real business environments, which are proved detrimental to their operation. Key words: Business environment, decision making, management by objectives, review. INTRODUCTION Nowadays, existing strategies in any contemporary by corporate headquarters. Therefore, although a business unit could conclude to the functional and technology strategy is focused on technology as a means operational strategic forms.