Compare And Contrast Frederick Taylor's Theory Of Management Theories

Henri Fayol was an Engineer and French industrialist. He recognizes the management principles rather than personal traits. Fayol was the first to identify management as a continuous process of evaluation. Fayol developed five management functions. These functions are roles performed by all managers which includes planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling. Additionally, he recognizes fourteen principles that should guide management of organizations.

Taylor developed his management theories from the shop floor by studying workers and processes. He came up with 4 principles that managers should apply all of which were composed by the studying of workers and experimentation. From his experiences Taylor thought that workers were motivated by income and that the only effective way to increase productivity was to increase the monetary incentives (Simha and Lemak 2010). Taylor’s theories tend to come from what is needed at the bottom levels of an organization and then begin to look up as to how that can be applied at the management level. Fayol on the other hand, not surprisingly as he was the managing director of the company he worked for, tended to look at things from the top down and noticed that an organization needed a hierarchy in order to run smoothly. He once noted how a horse breaking its leg in one of the mines stalled work because the manager was not around and no one had the authority to get another horse (Wren and Bedeian 2009). This sort of observation shows the necessity to have hierarchy in a company so as to limit the impact such situations can have in the absence of a

This paper analyzes five great management theorists: F. W. Taylor, Max Weber, Mary Parker Follett, and Douglas McGregor. Each theorist will be compared by four management functions: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling as detailed in the textbook: The Essentials of Contemporary Management-Sixth Edition from Gareth Jones and Jennifer M. George. We begin by discussing commerce prior the industrial revolution and then we define the key management functions, followed by an examination of each theorist, applying a template of analysis and critique.

Scientific Management is also known as Taylorism. Fredrick Winslow Taylor wanted to divide the work process into small, simple and separate steps (Division of Labor). Division of Labor meant every worker only had one or two steps, this was created to boost productivity. Taylor also believed in Hierarchy, he wanted a clear chain of command that separated the managers from workers. He did this so managers would design work process and enforced how the work was performed and employees would simply follow directions. Taylor wanted to select and train high performing workers or first-class employees and match them to a job that best suited them. Taylor believed the most productive workers should be paid more. Employees who could not meet the new higher standard were fired.

While scientific development emphasised principles to improve worker effectiveness, another branch within the classical school arose, administrative management, with its main contributor being French industrialist Henri Fayol. He is regarded as the father of administrative management as he proposed fourteen principles of management intended to assist managers in determining what to do to manage an organisation more effectively (Rodrigues, 2001). Fayol’s ideas are still valid in today’s organisations and his definitions of management are widely used in this field of study. In his book General and Industrial Management, published in 1916, he defined management as “to manage is to forecast and plan, to organise, to command, to coordinate and to control” (Fayol, 1916). This definition yielded the now known functions of management. Fayol’s approach to management has several similarities with Taylor’s scientific management theory. Included in Fayol’s fourteen principles is the division of work, which outlined the need for workers to specialise in specific jobs (Rodrigues, 2001). This idea of work specialisation has been derived from Taylor’s principles of scientific management. Furthermore, the empowerment of managers, proper training of employees and the use of a reasonable rewards system were principles that originated

Henri Fayol’s theory was almost a century old and was originally written in French. Further review on several journal articles has led to an overview background of Fayol’s working life which provided the foundation that conceptualized his theory. According to Wren (2001), Fayol was appointed as the Director in a mining company, Decazeville, where he succeeded to turnaround the company to become profitable. Fayol was the first person to classify the functions of a manager’s job. Fayol (1949; as cited in Wren, 2001) identified five key functions in managerial works.as planning, organising, command, coordination and control. Planning consists of any managerial work that involves setting goals and coordinating actions to

Henri Fayol (1841-1925) was a theorist who believed in a theory which was based on how management interacts with the performance of a business. Management theory is defined as ‘bringing change in actual behaviour’ (chapter 2 article). In this modern day, many businesses rely on Fayol’s Classic theory to manage staff effectively. Fayol introduced the idea of splitting crucial activities that firms carry out on a day to day basis into 6 separate groups (technical, commercial, financial, security, accounting and management). However, out of those activities, Fayol believed that managerial activities within organisations, whether they are big or small, where senior jobs are present, most important. (Henri Fayol article 1949) He came to the conclusion that within the managerial sector, there are five elements. This included, planning, organisation, command, coordination and control. These were listed in his book General and Industrial Administration (1916) (Henri Fayol article 1949). This essay is going to explore different interpretations of management and specifically comparing classical theorists such as Fayol and Taylor as well as humanist theorists such as McGregor and finally, empirical theorists such as Luthen. This essay will also analyse Fayol’s theory and how it has been criticised over the years.

Today, there is increasing evidence of scientific management becoming dated as we become more focused on incorporating ideologies of modern management approaches. Chowdhury claims that, “There is much truth in the saying that every living practitioner is prisoner to the ideas of a dead theorist.” (2000, pp. 21). It is emphasised here how our view of theorists has dramatically changed over time and one of the reasons for this different perspective as seen in this century is discussed by Grint, “Management theory, especially American management theory, has generally been construed to represent this rational development towards a more effective system over time.” (1997, pp. 48). Due to gradual changes in management practices, it is evident that Taylor’s theory is arguably becoming less significant.

Taylor imagined that workers would be able to make out the relationship between completion of more work in units and the economic rewards been increased. Taylors work as described by (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004) depicts how theories were to take place at shop floor levels, then how facts were substituted for opinion and guess work. Henri Fayol, his fellow classical writer had a different perception which looked at organisation from top to bottom. The pace setters of classical theories had engineering background hence derived theories with scientific approach. (Buchanan and Huczunski, 2004). (Cole, 2004) talks about how the production environment under the classical theory in America had created difficulties, where labour force were skint, uneducated, and in quest of making economic fortunes. (Lemak, 2004) point out how the classical management has had

Taylor's own name for his approach was scientific management. This sort of task-oriented optimization of work tasks is nearly ubiquitous today in industry, and has made most industrial work menial, repetitive, tedious and depressing; this can be noted, for instance, in assembly lines and fast-food restaurants. Ford's arguments began from his observation that, in general, workers forced to perform repetitive tasks work at the slowest rate that goes unpunished. This slow rate of work (which he called "soldiering", but might nowadays be termed by those in charge as "loafing" or "malingering" or by those on the assembly line as "getting through the day"), he opined, was based on the observation that, when paid the same amount, workers will tend to do the amount of work the slowest among them does: this reflects the idea that workers have a vested interest in their own well-being, and do not benefit from working above the defined rate of work when it will not increase their compensation. He therefore proposed that the work practice that had been developed in most work environments was crafted, intentionally or unintentionally, to be very inefficient in its execution. From this he posited that there was one best method for performing a particular task, and that if it were taught to workers, their productivity would go up.

Fayol’s theory falls under the category of administrative management, which is concerned with how an organization should be managed to maximize performance. Fayol’s theory

According tot the Administrative Management Theory, management is the process of getting certain tasks completed through the use of people. In this theory developed by Henri Fayol, he believes that it was very important to have the use of a multiplied of people instead of just relying on one person alone. Henri Fayol is known today as the “Father of Modern Management”, his theory has shaped what is know today as the Administrative Model, which relies on Fayols fourteen principles of management. These principles have been a significant influence on modern management; they have helped early 20th century manager learn how to organize and interact with their employees in a productive way. Fayols principles of management were the ground work in which his theory was formed. He believed highly in the division of work throughout a project and within the project he believed that the task at hand had to be done with a certain level of discipline in order for the division of work to be able to run smoothly without error.

Henri Fayol (1841-1925), was ‘’famous for the classical school of management, which emphasises command and control’’. (Robinson, 2005) He is deemed to be one of the founders of general management; also referred to as the administrative theory and later on becoming known as ‘Fayolism’.

By the time Henri Fayol had finished his theory, General Industrial Management, in 1916, which was based on his reminiscence as a successful turnaround of a major mining company from depths of failure; he set out to illustrate management as being a separate entity to other jobs within an organisation as he would say although “technical” and “commercial” “function” were “clearly defined”, “administrative” education was lacking. In his theory he introduced his five duties a manager had to follow to be called effective: plan, organise coordinate, command, and control and added to this fourteen principles he felt managers should use as reference to conduct the five duties. However Fayol was very much an idealist his theory was based on what a complete manager should be like and gave the view of managers taking control from behind a desk, yet critics, most influential being the academic Henry Mintzberg, who released his work in 1973, were more realists and saw a manager life as chaotic, involved and interactive, arguing what Fayol was portraying is not possible, and outdated.

Henri Fayol: Henri Fayol was administrative management’s most articulate spokesperson. A French industrialist, Fayol was unknown to U.S. managers and scholars until his most important work, General and Industrial Management, was translated into English in 1930. 16 Drawing on his own managerial experience, he attempted to systematize the practice of management to provide guidance and direction to other managers. Fayol also was the first to identify the specific managerial functions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. He believed that these functions accurately reflect the core of the management process. Most contemporary management books still use this framework, and practicing managers agree that these