Fayol's Functions of Management

Critically discuss the extent to which Fayol's classical analysis of the management function has largely been made redundant by the more recent empirical studies of what managers actually do, such as that favoured by Mintzberg.

18. Henri Fayol classified management functions into five categories. ANS: T PTS: 1 TOP: AACSB Reflective Thinking DIF: Easy KEY: Creation of Value

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.

Critically, an early pioneer of this managerial structure within organisations was Henri Fayol. Fayol devised a ‘common sense’ view of the managerial responsibilities

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

One of the four functions of management by Henri Fayol is leading. Leadership refers to the process of influencing a group to achieve goals. (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg& Coulter). Being one of the four management functions by Henri Fayol, leading can be both extremely important and challenging. Successful leaders have to perform planning, organizing and controlling for the productivity of a company and to implement the four functions of management. (Hunter, E. M., Neubert, M. J., Perry, S. J., Witt, L. A., Penney, L. M., & Weinberger, E. 2013) good leaders inspire employees, boost morale and encourage effective communication among employees. Excellent leadership increases the organization's income.

There many classical management approaches that have shaped what management is today. In specific, Henri Fayol had major contributions to the world of management through his five published rules of management. These rules of management to the four functions of management, planning, organizing, command, and coordination. He stated that the five guidelines of management were foresight, organization, command, coordination, control. Foresight is when you complete a plan for the future. The first rule, Foresight involves the construction of a plan for the organization’s future. This rule relates to the planning function of management as firms today also create strategic plans or furthering the given organization's success. The second rule, Organization is the duty that provides the company resources to actually implement the plan, this rule coincides with the organizing function of their group. Command is the third managerial rule that Fayol introduced and what he meant by this is, command is needed to lead and inspire workers to complete a certain goal. This managerial rule relates to the leading function of management because the leading function of managing makes sure that a task is completed. Coordination is the fourth managerial rule introduced by Fayol, and it means to fit diverse employees and efforts together in order to solve a problem. This relates to the leading function of management as well because it the function is concerned with getting problems solved and leading

The management and organisations discipline considers Henry Fayol (1841 – 1925) to be one of the early practitioners of management who recognised principles and theories of management. Indeed, current students, teachers and practitioners find Fayol’s management principles to be of interest. This is especially the case since numerous management authors (Bose, 2013: Lamond, 2005: Lewis, 2007) have the common belief that Fayol’s effort founded the elementary framework and principles for management theory currently being applied. Fayol dedicated a lot of time to endorsing the theory of administration and throughout this time argued that all business activities precipitate undertakings which are classified into six groups: financial, commercial, technical, accounting security, and management (Lamond, 2005). While focusing on the management aspect, Fayol considered it to be a systematic arrangement and integration of the financial, accounting, production, and sales functions of the organisation. Hence, the purpose of Fayol’s management theory was a way of establishing management as a different aspect from other technical activities, however, important to the integration of various organisational activities in order to realise a common objective. In that respect, Parker & Ritson, 2005 posit that Fayol’s management principles offered and continue to offer an overall management outlook for practising managers as well as an instructional manual for academicians in the management discipline. The objective of this report is to therefore critically discuss Fayol’s perspectives through an analysis of these views as well as other

Fayol’s approach to management was much more directed towards discovering the elements it took to be an

Henry Mintzberg stated that the diverse works of managers can be best described from their roles, and regarded his ten ‘managerial roles’ as successive of Henri Fayol’s managerial functions. These roles are divided into three conceptual categories, informational (managing by information), interpersonal (managing through people) and decisional (managing through action). Informational roles can be further divided into monitor, disseminator and spokesperson, while interpersonal roles divide into figurehead, leader and liaison. Decisional roles subdivide into entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator and negotiator (Robbins et al., 2003).

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’.

Classical Management Theory was proposed by a French industrialist named Henri Fayol. Although Fayol lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but his work was not translated into english until the late Forties. His theory look at management from two components elements of management and principles of management. For this paper I will be discussing principles of management, how working at The Westin Kierland Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona displays principles of Fayol’s theory; as well as defining the relevant principles and explaining how my examples learned from working at The Westin represent the principles defined. I have selected three principles of management to discuss in detail: scalar chain, unity of command, and

The work of Taylor and Fayol is essentially complementary. They both realized that the problem of HR and their management at all levels is the key to business success. Both applied scientific method to this problem. Taylor worked primarily on the operative level, from the bottom of the organizational hierarchy upward. Fayol concentrated on the Managing Director (his term) and worked downward.

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.

Henry Fayol has come to be recognized as the founding father of the classical management theory during the XX and XXI century. His theories, which are very famous all around the world, have been over the years the framework in the development of what is known as modern management. According to Van (2011) “Fayol gained world-wide fame for his 14 general principles of management. He distinguished six general activities for industrial enterprises: technical, commercial, financial, security, accounting and managerial. He defined five functions of management for the management component and these are still seen as relevant to organizations today”. Despite the fact that Fayol’s theories about management and administration ware born early 1900s, nowadays many directors and managers relay on such concepts to drive their organization towards success.