The section of business labelled as management has been a cause of debate which began centuries ago and still has no clear winner, with several theories being proposed on the basic question of ‘what is management?’. Discussions of this kind led to the creation and development of various teachings and schools of thought on the subject. One such teaching is that of the classical approach, under this approach theorists would consider management to be a topic that one could study, and be seen as a structural activity. A theorist who followed this approach was Henri Fayol, who published his ideas in the early twentieth century. At this time people believed that the activity of management revolved around key principles which could guarantee managerial success. However as time passed and people continued to study management, theorists such as Weber, Mintzberg and many others proposed the idea that management should be studied empirically by analysing what managers actually do. Therefore this essay will be analysing what theorist offers the most effective analysis of what management actually is.
The perspective of management taken by Fayol (1841-1925) and the rationale behind his argument.
Fayol’s approach to management was centred on his own personnel experiences which is one of the main contrasts between Fayol and other theorists who use empirical methods. Fayol spent his working life in the French mining industry. Until his early thirties, Fayol worked as an engineer before
Compare and contrast the traditional roles of managers presented by Fayol’s early writings with more contemporary research of Stewart and Mintzberg. Support your answers with examples.
Henry Fayol was working in France at a mining company as an engineer who later became the director of the company when it employed more than 1,000 people. He came up with the theory of management functions from his observations and experience while working in the company. He also established and published 14 important principles of management. However, Henry Mintzberg dismissed Fayol’s management functions claiming that managers nowadays apply little planning or not at all, hence, their work is unpredictable (Bateman, 2012). Mintzberg came up with three broad categories of managerial roles. These two theories are seen as competing views where one seems to be the base of the other.
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
In this essay, I have chosen to discuss how Max Weber (1864-1920) and Henri Fayol (1841-1925) compare and contrast in their ideology and contributions to the field of management. Max Weber focused on how to structure an organisation to become successful. He developed six main elements to promote this success, which he considered would develop efficiency. He called it bureaucracy. Bureaucracy has its advantages and disadvantages, it was considered to be “both rational and efficient” (Tiernan, Morley, 2013, p. 17), but for example Weber’s rather strict division of labour also led to workers becoming bored and unmotivated. The six elements that he created were; Division of labour, Hierarchy, Selection, Career orientation, Formalisation and Impersonality.
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
The book General and Industrial Management (1949, French 1916) was the first book published by Henri Fayol. After that others followed and created their own theory of management built upon the basis of Fayol’s classical theory of management, some, for instance: Mintzberg in his book The Nature of Managerial Work (1973), suggests a different view on management.
One of the major problems facing secondary school administration in Nigeria has been the absence of appropriate and efficient guidelines for effective management. Some of the administrative management strategies have been based on a variety factors. While some have be based on set goals with no adequate information, others have been characterized by a high level of ignorance of administrative processes on the part of the administrators. The falling standard in education in the country is partly attributable to this poor administration of the secondary schools due to lack of specialized personnel with in-depth administrative strategies. This study is therefore aimed at addressing the deficiencies in the administrative process in the secondary schools through the application of the Henri Fayol’s managerial principles in the management of the secondary schools. A structured questionnaire was designed with the fourteen principles on which the opinion of the secondary schools stakeholders (Principals, Teachers, PTA and Educational Inspectors) was solicited. The tested instrument was then administered to a total of 3732 respondents selected through a stratified random sampling procedure across the six geopolitical
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.
Top managers’ functions are very important as it can either cause the success or the failure of a business. The successful organization, Boeing, is a leading aerospace company and the unsuccessful one is the, Swiss Air, once known as the ‘flying bank’. Continuous innovation at Boeing has led to its success in a highly competitive industry. (Valuing Integrity 2014,5) However, a year after the 11 September 2001 attack, Swiss Air folded. Fayol’s four management functions that is, planning, leading, organizing and controlling were used in both companies.(Wadell, Jones and George 2013,7) This essay will argue that top managers of Swiss Air failed to apply Fayol’s four functions of management in their organization as the emergency in flight taking
Early management theories adopted by such proponents as Henri Fayol, Mary Parker Follett and Max Weber are relevant in todays’ world. In this essay I am going to discuss about all three theorists and how their theories are still relevant for managers in the 21st century in meeting the challenges. In the classical approach to management there are three branches under it. They are, scientific management, administrative principles and bureaucratic organisation. Henry Fayol and Mary Parker Follett developed theories for administrative principles and Max Weber developed a theory for bureaucratic organisation (Schermerhorn et al. 2014, p.36). First we will be going through Henri Fayol and then Mary Parker Follett as they both made theories
For instance, Mintzberg (1973) claims that the Fayol’s management model has nothing in common with the reality of managerial work. Thus, relying on own observation of five senior managers, he concludes that managers would get some responsibilities and behaviours that will need to be adhered to with the type of management they are doing or for the type of organisation that they are working for, (Mintzberg, 1971; Fells, 2000). However, the main point of debates is the fact that the classical management theory outlined only general principles and provided a framework of what is the nature of managerial work. Fayol’s work is also regarded as being one of the first to be written down about manager’s roles based on observation research method. So as he was the first there is always a chance that he could be wrong, or this could be because times change, and this is apparent when trying to compare the classical approach to Mintzberg’s systems approach. Although Fayol’s classical approach was not really a tested solution so lacked any evidence, whereas another approach has been tested and can therefore be backed up by evidence to make it a more solid argument. In this case, the point is that the future studies could be more informative and
The paper will explore different theories of Management, include Henri Fayol and Henry Mintzberg. This section of this paper provides an overview of functions, roles and skills required of a manager. What is Management? Management can define as the process of reaching organisational goals by working with and through people and other organisational resources. (Management Innovation, 2008).
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
Many experts in management field have analyzed the concept of management in some certain ways, but one of the most comprehensive concept tends to be the concept stated by Fayol (1930). These concepts consist of “Division, Authority, Discipline, Unity of Command, Unity of Direction, Subordination of Individual Interests, Remuneration, Centralization, Scalar Chain, Order, Equity, Stability of Tenure of Personnel, Initiative, and Esprit de Corps (Team Spirit)”. Management can be defined as the art of using
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’.