Post Modern Management [infogettable.net]

Post modern Management theory
IT and modern management
OpenACS

MBO - management by objective - popularised by Peter Drucker - "a process by which managers and subordinates work together in identifying goals and setting up objectives, and make plans together in order to achieve these objectives. These working goals (performance objectives) are to be consistent with the organizational goals (value objectives)." The author lays down five main concepts of MBO:

1. Central goal setting
2. Manager-subordinate involvement
3. Matching goals and resources
4. Freedom of implementation
5. Evaluation and appraisal of performance

The author then goes on to discuss some details and implications of MBO.

But the interesting part is still to come in the second page, as the author applies what he has discussed about MBO to GSS or Group Support [IT] Systems (that's groupware to you and I).

In the final page he discusses the specific example of the open source OpenACS collaboration software (incidentally used to run this site and the site the article is published on—so sure we're biased!).

The predecessor of OpenACS, ArsDigita ACS, was used to build Siemen's ShareNet—the pinup poster child of business collaboration and knowledge management systems. As an example of it's value, it is one of four case studies used in a Berkeley Knowledge Management subject alongside The World Bank and Daimler Chrysler (link).

According to this ArsDigita case study, Siemens has publicly attributed over $122 million in additional sales to ShareNet, in the first year of operation. Not bad ROI for a system whose main components are available as open source software.