INTRODUCTION:

Education is the driving force of economic and social development in any country^1,2. Considering this, it is necessary to find ways to make education of good quality, efficient and effective using the latest methodologies. India has a billion-plus population and a high proportion of the young and hence it has a large formal education system. The demand for education in developing countries like India has skyrocketed as education is still regarded as an important bridge of social, economic and political mobility³.

Society has high expectations of the education system, yet the yield it provides does not seem able to keep pace with these expectations. Furthermore, the cost of education has risen, and this has led in turn to a critical look at bureaucracy within educational institutions The labour market for teachers is also increasingly tight, especially for certain subjects and in certain regions. These developments mean we must seek the increased effectiveness of the education provided. This means achieving an increase in the quality of the education especially the technical/professional education.

The emphasis lies on the way the primary process (i.e. the educational process) is organized and the role of the teacher in this.

There is currently no empirical evidence available on how education can be made more effective. India has at present more than 5000 professional colleges offering degrees in various disciplines with an annual intake of about 6 lakh students. This has thrown up many challenges before the professional academic community in the form of maintaining quality in teaching, uniform assessment and evaluation methods of the students across the country as well as accreditation of the courses and degree programmes. In addition, with the country opening up for exchange of students from various nations, it becomes also important to enhance the quality and efficiency of the teachers engaged in providing professional education. There is also a large requirement of well trained and highly motivated and efficient teachers to meet the needs of the many newly started professional colleges. This has urged to apply the various management strategies to enhance the effectiveness of teachers engaged in teaching various professional courses. MBO being an effective strategic management tool can be used effectively to meet up the challenges being faced by the professional colleges of our country.

Concept of MBO:

Since the nineteen fifties Management By Objectives (MBO) has been a vehicle for motivation, evaluation and control for many organizations both small and large⁴. The program features a systematic approach to change that stresses the achievement of results by directing individual efforts toward attainable objectives. These efforts involved agreed upon objectives between the supervisor and the subordinate. MBO is a process through which specific goals are set collaboratively for the organisation as a whole and all units and individuals within it. The goals are then used as a basis for planning, managing organisation activities, evaluation of performance and reward.

The strengths of MBO are that it provides an environment where employees can voice on how their jobs are designed and what their performance targets should be⁵. It aids in planning by making managers establishes goals. It provides communication between both the teachers and the stakeholders, because both can express their views on what objectives they can and cannot accomplish. Everybody in the organisation becomes more aware of the organization’s goals. The evaluation process becomes fairer because people are measured on specified targets and their performance in achieving goals of the organisation. With specific objectives laid out, suggestions from all levels of management can be obtained. Managers will have clearer idea of the vital areas of their responsibility and the standards that are required. Hence, allowing them to focus and utilize their resources. MBO creates a participatory work environment to help employees become more involved. In this way, every subordinate in the organization is more motivated.

MBO works because it helps to align the individual efforts of broad teams around the organization's collective objectives⁶. MBO works in the same way that a laser beam works. A laser is, at its heart, just light. We have light all around us. However, that light is diffused. It is scattered, going in every direction. As a result it does not cut through the things that it strikes. Similarly, unless the light is very bright and extremely focused, it is not generally noticeable. Lasers, however, take a relatively small amount of light and focus it into a narrow beam which is very noticeable and at sufficient size can cut metal. Management by Objectives does the same thing. Organizations today are often diffused light sources with each member of the organization focusing on different, often personal, objectives. So instead of being able to cut through the market and capture more market share, or command higher prices, organizations are lucky to make steady growth.

The MBO process starts with the organization defining its objectives. The process of strategic planning, goal setting, or visioning generates from its process a set of objectives that the organization should strive to achieve. From there it is up to the individual departments to form their objectives, most if not all of which should align and support the organizational objectives. Individual objectives are then established to support the organizational objectives.

Setting goals at the employee level that align with the goals of the organization is the key. The SMART⁷ method is one way to help one how to walk through the process of setting the objectives.

§ S for Specific: There are several key factors which should be present in the objectives that are set in order to make them effective. They should be specific. In other words, they should describe specifically the result that is desired.

§ M for Measurable: The second example is much more specific and also addresses the second factor—measurable. In order to be able to use the objectives as a part of a review process it should be very clear whether the person met the objective or not.

§ A for Achievable: The next important factor to setting objectives is that they be achievable.

§ R for Realistic: This leads into the next factor—realistic. Realistic objectives are objectives that recognize factors which cannot be controlled. Said another way, realistic goals are potentially challenging but not so challenging that the chance of success is small. They can be accomplished with the tools that the person has at their disposal.

§ T for Time-based: The final factor for a good objective is that it is time-based. This final factor is often implied in MBO setting. The implied date is the date of the next review, when the employee will be held accountable for the commitments that they have made through their objectives.

In essence, Management by objectives is a process where there is agreement by an intramural administrator and staff members on organizational goals mutual, agreement on the staff member attempts to meet these goals and objectives, and then a review to evaluate how close the result's parallel objectives and goals.

Concept of Effectiveness:

The concept of effectiveness has received wide attention in organizational behavior literature^8-10. The impressive arrays of literature on effectiveness as well as its acclaimed central importance of the concept, however, belie the problems faced by theorists in developing a clear definition of the concept.

Bernard¹¹ has defined effectiveness as - oriented having to do with the achievement of cooperative and organizational goals. It indicates how proactive or active, somebody is lexically; Oxford Dictionary defines effectiveness as "causing 'or capable of doing things”. An effective organization must have clearly defined goals and purpose, which bind its members together. Dictionary of Business and Management has provided the meaning to effectiveness as the management process, the optimal organization relationship among five determinants: production, efficiency, satisfaction, adaptiveness and development from some other perspectives. Thus effectiveness involves the ability to do something or carry out a programme or ability to achieve a goal (with minimum effort and use of scarce resource that is very crucial to the rapid development of any economy. Kane and Freeman ¹² conceptualized effectiveness as the ability to acquire inputs, process these inputs, channel the outputs and maintain stability. Andrew and Szillagyi ¹³ also conceptualized effectiveness as task accomplishment and an act by which employees carry out their assigned duties in accordance with laid down procedures. Kellaroghm [14] explained that effectiveness is an accomplishment of goals. According to him, efforts alone do not yield effectiveness, as individuals must possess abilities, needs and other personal traits. Thus effectiveness is the degree to which employee attains short and long term goals, the selection of which reflects strategic constituencies, self interest of the evaluator and the life stage of the organization. High teacher motivation to work and strong commitment to work are essential ingredients for effective teaching. When these characteristics are absent, teachers are likely to consider their commitment as being a "fair day's work, for a fair day's pay - instead of exceeding minimum and giving their best.

The goals of professional institutions are teaching, dissemination of existing and new information and the pursuit of service to the community or external constituencies and organizing workshops and seminars. Learning for maximum development and fulfillment of national consciousness is the ultimate aim of education.

MBO Procedure:

Effective MBO techniques require an understanding of the procedure to be followed from the identification of the purpose or mission of an organization to the specific objectives and action plan. Fagbemi¹⁵ illustrates the procedure as shown below:

Organization Role

· Basic Purpose

· Mission

· Vision

· Goals

Situation Analysis

· Workload

· Inhibiting Factors to Results performance

· Enhancing Factors object to Performance

· Future Factors

Specific Objective and Progress Review

· Documentation of specific objectives and action

· Review and Agreement on specific objectives

Action Plans

· Progress Report

· Review of Progress Report

· Corrective Actions/Measures

· Teachers’ Training and Exposure

In order to effectively deploy MBO in technical education the following pre-conditions are suggested:

i. The educational organization is a “physical” entity, which can be reengineered and controlled

ii. The educational organization functions based on rules, procedures and regulations

iii. The educational organization’s outputs can be measured

iv. The educational organization must formulate goals, decide on means, and monitor output

v. The educational organization can be optimized to run like a “machine”

vi. The major components behind the success are: Students, Teachers, Management, University and Government Authorities.

The new philosophy about the students and teachers to be adopted are:

i. Students are partners

ii. Students have an identity and care about their learning process

iii. Teachers are persons who facilitate students’ learning processes

iv. Teachers discuss with students their way to achieve their goals

v. Students learn in relation to their past experience and their thoughts about their future life and career

vi. The ambient of the organisation has a great effect on the performance of the students

The basic purpose is the essential reason for an organization. It is brief, comprehensive and descriptive of result. The second point is the identification of goals or objectives as defined by the organization. This process normally starts at the top management level with the development of a set of organizational goals and objectives. Goal setting should be seen as an on-going process whereby modification required may be made from time to time. Measurement within the first set is the listing of measurands by which the attainment of goals can be assessed. This implies identifying landmarks in the process of achieving goals that would indicate that progress is being made towards the attainment of the goals. The importance of this is that an effective manager should develop short term and long-term feedback loops so that that they can get quick indications of the effects of their actions.

The following techniques can be used to assess the teachers’ performance.

· Rating scales : personal trait and behavior scale

: job dimension scale

: behaviorally anchored

· Interpersonal comparisons

· Checklist - Weighted checklist

· Essay

· Critical incident

Situation analysis is an assessment of current performance effectiveness and related problems and condition affecting the manager. This type of assessment cannot be done in a vacuum: it requires, the superior, society at large, co-workers, government, subordinates, his own organization, other institutions, and technology. Fagbemi (1992) emphasized that situation analysis includes collective effects from a situation analysis, determining causes of situational effects, finding eliminators of causes in the situation and choosing the eliminator. The workload requires a description of the current organizational outputs into activities and manpower requirements. In the case of educational sector, the workload analysis includes the number of ministries, number of personnel system and duration. Inhibiting and enhancing factors to performance include shortage of teachers, inaccessibility to computer facilities, frustration from lack of training, indiscipline, inadequate funding. These problems could be theorized in terms of causes and possible actions to be taken to ameliorate them. The conceivable action plan, realistic objectives could be set. The future factors involve the identification and analysis of future changes and issues external to the organization or positions that are likely to affect it. These changes might be due to cultural, sociological, legislative, economic and political climates.

Specific objectives determine the priorities and key activities of the organizational units and sub units. Once specific objectives have been formulated and accepted by organizational units and individuals, they become the basis for activities and action plans required for their attainment. Continuous attention should then be paid to methods of achieving the objectives, the use of required method. A good specific objective should be acceptable, congruent and liable to comparison with alternatives. There are three types of objectives. They are: regular or routine objectives, problem-solving objectives and innovative or improvement objectives.

Progress review step is designed to measure progress and performance in the attainment of stated objective. The review normally requires making accurate information available and acts as a means of providing feedback to managers. The focus of progress review is a problem-solving and corrective action. Reddin¹⁶ identified the following review format:

(a) Superior-Subordinate Reviews: The supervisor and the subordinate sit in a session of one or two meetings, during which the subordinate reviews progress towards the achievement of his previously set goals. A third part acting as adviser may be present to act as observer and guide; this could be used at all levels of management.

(b) Commitment Reviews: This kind generally involves the manager, his immediate superior and a number of other interested parties. Members of this committee could be members of staff from other departments in the organization or higher levels of management. This .type of review is, however, generally reserved for middle and upper levels of management.

(c) Management Team Reviews: These generally involve a work group consisting of the manager and his subordinates. The review is aimed at measuring the progress made by a management team towards the attainment of the goal. This type of review is important to project management or organization where task forces are utilized in solving problems. The focus is generally on joint problem solving and improving working relationships.

Relevance of MBO to Teachers’ Effectiveness

No area of college administration is more fraught with perils than personal appraisal. The appraisal process is quite properly viewed as an integral part of the development of people in the organization. Systematic performance appraisal has been adopted by many organizations as a means of helping the academic administrators to evaluate the work of the teachers. These appraisals have been used most frequently as a basis for selection of candidates for promotion to higher positions and greater responsibilities. They are also useful as a check on the success of recruitment, selection, placement and training and development.

Appraisal of current performance helps to motivate employees. Hunt¹⁷ emphasized that for managerial control, activities should be continuously evaluated in the tight of planned behaviour and results so that corrective action can be taken when required. Based on a review of specific organizational MBO programmes, Carol and Tosi ⁴ emphasized that the adoption of this approach can improve performance, attitudes and planning. Miles¹⁸ itemized the advantages of MBO thus:

· It concentrates attention on main areas

· It makes organization to be effective;

· It identifies problem areas in progress towards achievement of objectives;

· It improves management control information and performance standards;

· It leads to a sound organizational structure clarifies responsibilities and skills delegation and coordination

· It identifies where changes are needed and seeks continua improvement in result.

· It aids management succession

· It identifies where training needs and provides an environment which encourages personal growth and self discipline;

· It improves appraisal system and provides a more equitable procedure for determining rewards and promotion plans;

· It improves communication and interpersonal relationships; and encourages motivation to improve individual performance.

Fagbemi¹⁵ writing on the reasons for MBO, emphasized that “each manager has a clear idea of the important areas of his work and standards required, the performance of staff can be assessed and their needs for improvement highlighted; greater participation may be got through improved communication and this makes individuals more aware of organizational goals and the peed to clarify objectives stressed. Suggestions for improvement are obtained from management levels. The appraisal of staff provides continued opportunities for each personnel to grow in competence. Appraisal assists professional personnel to improve their services to the organization and stresses areas of improvement at all management levels". This provides evidence for the selection and retention of new and permanent employees. Kane et. al.¹² on the relevance of appraisal, suggested that:

Rating will always be subject to justify the retention or termination of employee, the principal constructive use of evaluation should be the improvement of individuals in their chosen fields. Appraisal therefore, should be the most effective instrument to diagnose strengths and weaknesses. Appraisal minimizes defensive feeling because the superior is not a judge but a helper. Emphasis is on performance and not personality traits. Hunts¹⁷ on the issue of performance, identifies two major reasons as:

· Improving the management of staff resources by helping employees, realize and fully utilize their potential while striving to achieve organizational goals;

· Providing managers the information necessary for decision making in several areas of personnel management, promotion, straining, discipline etc. MBO provides assurance to the public that the utmost care is being taken to obtain and retain the best employees. It provides information to individuals in making comparisons and also provides a clear cut strategic plan and they are translated into departmental and personal goals, which are reviewed when results are obtained.

Factors Affecting the Effectiveness of Teaching:

There are differences in the working of a business organization and that of an educational organisation. A correlation table between the two types of organisation can be drawn as under:

Business Organization	Educational Organization
Establishment	College/Institution
Employees	Teachers
Managers	Academic administrators
Raw materials	Students intake
Finished goods	Students graduated from the college
Process	Teaching and evaluation of students
Customers	All stake holders like parents/guardians, Universities, society, industries etc.
Benchmarking	Approval, affiliation, accreditation etc.

Definitely the process of operation and performance in educational organizations are different from those of business organizations. In educational organizations the effectiveness depends largely on the following factors:

Mission, vision and Goals of the organization: The statements related to the mission, vision and goals of the organization should be clearly stated and are to be followed honestly. There should not be hidden agenda. All the human resources of the organization need to be tuned with the statements and should work in a holistic manner.

Infrastructural facilities: A sound infrastructural facilities definitely boost up the quality of teaching. However, providing only better infrastructure is not the only requirement, utilization and accessibility of those facilities play the important role.

Quality of teachers: Teachers are the human resource of the organization. The performance of the organization depends on the quality of teachers, their selection, training being imparted to them.

Quality of students: This is an important parameter to determine the performance of an educational organization.

Evaluation of students: the students should be evaluated in a logical manner. It is preferred to adopt progressive evaluation during the delivery of the lessons and over all evaluation at the end of the session. A judicious hybridization can be adopted for proper evaluation.

Feedback: This process helps the administrators to take preventive measures. Periodic feedback taken regularly and discussion of the outcome of the feedback with the teachers to find out the deficiencies and removal of such deficiencies will help to increase the effectiveness of the teachers.

Appraisal: Self appraisal from teachers should be taken at the end of each session and a detailed analysis can be made on the basis of comments received from the teachers for their self development. An appraisal system from Head of the departments should be in place to get the effectiveness and integrity of the teachers.

External factors: The norms, procedures, rules. working styles, requirements of the Universities, Government’s rule, Students’ Union, Teachers’ Union also play pivotal role in determining the effectiveness of the teachers and standard of teaching.

Measures to Ensure Teachers’ Effectiveness

Management should work out procedures by which employees could fill out evaluation forms to rate their employees, on those aspects of the work that can be directly observed by the subordinates.

Managers should try to capitalize upon teachers’ talents and skills. If a person is poor at doing detail work, but good at assignments where breadth and vision are demanded, then it makes little sense to try to be effective at detail work. Hence efforts should be concentrated at results rather than personality traits.

Teachers should be motivated in terms of reward for excellence and outstanding; performance. Development of technical competence in corporate programme planning goal or target setting, project design, analysis and evaluation should be encouraged. There must be an atmosphere of confidence and trust! The subordinate must ensure that his boss is for him that he approves of him and supports him.

Meetings should be organized for the raters so that common agreement on job performance appraisal can prevail. Appraisal therefore must be reliable, accurate and consistent. Age, sex, marital status, religion and other personal matters that do not affect employees' performance of their duties should not be considered.

Each employee should be given a copy of evaluation policies when newly employed, the evaluator should demonstrate impartiality to all employees. Genuinely, democratic procedures should be applied. The application of MBO is a difficult and lengthy task. It requires all levels of management to understand and accept the step by step procedure. The senior level team should approach MBO carelessly, unaware of the need to attend briefing, seminars and thorough understanding of what the programme will involve. Government should be committed to work with individual philanthropic organizations and other stakeholders for the development of education. Efforts should be made to support all programmes and projects aimed at improving the quality of students at the entry level. Avoidance of excessive paper work and forms which lead to a mechanistic approach; the right spirit and interest from staff concerned and effective team work are also required.

CONCLUSION:

In this paper, an attempt has been made to look at the possibility of enhancing the effectiveness of teachers through the use of MBO in which appraisal plays an important role. Organizations need more adequate measures of appraisal than they are now employing. Progress in the behavioural sciences now makes these measurements possible. As a consequence, new resources are available to assist teachers in their responsibility for successful implementation.

The college managements’ responsibility require that he builds on organization whose structure, goals, level of loyalty, motivation, interaction skills and competence are such that achieve its objectives effectively.

As a tool to assist management, a teacher needs a constant flow of measurements reporting on the state of organization. This is due to the fact that no organization can function effectively without setting key and specific objectives. MBO cannot operate in a vacuum. Good human relations, effective communication and leadership ability, skills and talents, knowledge are essential ingredients which must never be overlooked.

REFERENCES:

1. Cholin, V. S. , 'Study of the application of information technology for effective access to resources in Indian university libraries', The International Information and Library Review, 37(3); 2005; 189-197

2. Mehta, S. and Kalra, 'Information and Communication Technologies: A bridge for social equity and sustainable development in India', The International Information and Library Review; 38(3); 2006; 147-160

3. Amutabi, M. N. and Oketch, M. O., 'Experimenting in distance education: the African Virtual University (AVU) and the paradox of the World Bank in Kenya', International Journal of Educational Development; 23(1); 2003; 57-73

4. Carol, S.J. and Tosi, H.L., Management by Objective: Applications and Research New York:Macmillan, 1993

5. Courter, P., Organizational Effectiveness London: Mac Graw Hill, 1989

6. Humble, J.W., Management by Objectives. London: McGraw Hill, 1972

7. Cameroon, K., Measuring organizational effectiveness in institutions of higher education. Administrative Science Quarterly, 23; 1972; 603-632.

8. Kroontz, H., Management: A Book of Readings, Britain; Prentice Hall, 1996

9. Minor, J.B., The Management Process: Theory and Practice, New York: Macmillan, 1993.

10. Drucker, F., The Practice of Management, New York: Harper and Row, 1964.

11. Bernard, B. O., Organizational Psychology, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1967.

12. Kane, J.D. and Freeman, KA, MBO and Performance appraisal: A Mixture that is not a solution, Personnel Journal, 3 (12); 1986;26-36.

13. Andrew, A and Swillazi, B., How to Appraise Executive Performance, London: Mac Graw. Hill, 1981

14. Kellanghan, F. Rokow, P. and King, D. (1989). Organizational Behavior, Illinois, 1989.

15. Fagbemi, A.O., Management by objectives Badagry: Ascon Management Series, 1992.

16. Reddin, W.J., Effective Management by Objectives: The Team Approach, McGraw Hill, 1971.

17. Hunt, W.J., Managing people at work London: McGraw Hill, 1972.

18. Miles, E.R. and Snow C., Organizational Strategy, Structure and Process. New York: McGraw Hill, 1978.

Received on 13.02.2011 Accepted on 27.02.2011

Asian J. Management 2(2): April-June, 2011 page 57-62