Daniel Sykes
BUS1001 – Semester 1 Essay
Critically discuss the extent to which Fayol’s classic 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.
Intro: (89words) Management has constantly been a broad topic. Managing human resources is continuously unpredictable because we all react differently in comparable scenarios. However, for managers it is vital to be able to control an organisation efficiently, in order to exploit any opportunities open to it. Henri Fayol deliberated management back in 1916. His ideas, however, have been questioned by the more recent research of Henry Mintzberg. In this essay we will look at
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Mintzberg states the article’s intentions is ‘to break the reader away from Fayol’s words and introduce him to a more supportable, and what I believe to be a more useful, description of managerial work.’ But does this mean Fayol’s classic analysis of management has been made redundant by Mintzberg more recent studies?
Analysis work: One popular view from Wren (1994) is that the work of Fayol and Mintzberg is talking about individual areas of management which are different rather than conflicting views. This could be due to the unique motivating factors from their own personal back grounds which encouraged them to talk about management. Jean-Louis Peaucelle (2012) spoke about Henri Fayol’s minor military background, as his father was posted to fulfil this military service. He speaks about how these factors motivated Fayol into pursing management. Hence, showing us that Fayol had more of a strict view on management which is followed up by the work of Dr Gordon Pearson. Dr Pearson then continues stating that Fayol’s structure and principles gave management authority to give orders and have them obeyed. Whilst workers must be soley focused on the objectives of the organisation whilst act work. Furthermore his work displays little from a social aspect of management. Henri Fayol focused on the business goals and objectives rather than its
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.
Mention each account affected and the appropriate amount. The Reserve account of the company is increased by $ 10,000; cash account of the bank is increase by $ 90,000, while the liability of $
The administrative management viewpoint evolved early in the 1900s and is most closely identified with Henri Fayol (1841-1925), a French industrialist. Fayol’s work, “Administration industrielle et générale (1916)”, later translated into the 1949 “General and industrial administration”, is one of the first and most widely quoted analyses on management. As a result, Fayol influenced many writers, most notably Urwick. Although, there have been many theories supporting Fayol’s ideas, but there have been many writers who have directly opposed Fayol, the most prominent one being Henry Mintzberg, who in his “The Nature of Managerial Work (1973)” regarded Fayol’s ideas as “folklore”. The aim of this essay is to evaluate the works of both Fayol and Mintzberg, discussing the pros and cons of both the theories. Moreover, the essay will depict that how Fayol has been able to withstand “the test of time” and prove that his theory cannot be termed as “folklore”.
The task: Henri Fayol presented his analysis of the management function in 1916 and it has largely been
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
a. Specify your point of view: Answer the question “Is Henri Fayol’s management theory relevant today? ”Today 's world is highly complex with ever changing technology, increasing threats regarding climate change, medicine, global security, diversity in the
During the operation of management, structured people in one organisation coordinate with each other to accomplish common goals. To ensure the process is efficient with scare resources, different scholars advance different interpretations, such as Classical Theorists and Human Relations Theorists. The most famous point of view in Classical Theorists is to manage is to forecast and plan, to organize, to command, to co-ordinate and to control, which is advanced by Fayol. It must be admitted that an increasing number of people are concerned about the usability of the Classical Theorists. However, whether it is suitable and widespread in daily management has caused heated debate. From my perspective, Fayol’s standpoint is certainly universal in organisations and management today and I will discuss this in the following paragraphs.
Although Fayol’s management processes were dismissed by Mintzberg, Mintzberg’s model in fact confirms the classical perspective. As outlined in Management Decision (2004), the two models are “complementary understandings of management and managerial behaviour” (Lamond, 2004). Thus Mintzberg’s managerial roles complement Fayol’s processes, elaborating the theories to describe the
• Discuss Fayol’s contributions to management theory. • Describe Max Weber’s contribution to management theory. • Explain how today’s managers use general administrative theories of management.
Subsequently Mintzberg believing the reality of management to be vastly different from the true image went on to offer his own description of what ‘to manage’ entails. This comprised of 10 roles which can be split into 3 subsections. Mintzberg (1975) “Formal authority gives rise to the three interpersonal roles, which in turn give rise to the three informational roles; these two sets of roles enable the manager to play the four decisional roles”. Although Mintzberg’s attempt to reform the views on management was successful in stirring other theorists to conduct studies in the area, he can be criticised for the language he used not being explicit enough and although he has empirical evidence to support his discovery of how managers behave, it does not imply this is the way managers should behave as this view of management behaviour may not be that of an effective manager?
Henri Fayol, the first father of formal management statements, who wrote down five elements of management behaviour – planning, organising, coordinating, commanding and controlling. (Wren and Bedeian, 2009) During over 50 years, Fayol’s management functions have been challenged continuously by new developed theories in modern society, considering Fayol’s functions are “folklore”, as mentioned by Mintzberg (1990, pp 50), it is improper to building a theory from own experience, then Mintzberg outlined three main categories of management roles – information roles, interpersonal roles and decisional roles. (Mintzberg, 2010) It is claimed that Fayol’s functions have been made redundant by modern theory of Mintzberg. Debate also has been triggered on which one is more useful at current, Fayol or Mintzberg. While there is no deny that Fayol’s management function has a great significance in management organisation, this essay will argue that Fayol’s theory has not been redundant when facing more empirical theories that wrote by Mintzberg. In order to demonstrate this, it will first, examine two main arguments with evidence against Fayol’s theory, claiming the limitation of commanding and controlling in reality and problem of decision-making as well. It will then illustrate strengthens of adapting Fayol’s management function, using its successful examples.
For Henri Fayol, management was not so much as a way of devising systems to increase productivity but it was concerned with the integration of the different functions of the organisation such as production, sales, finance and so on (Wren, 1994).
Henri Fayol was one of the most influential contributors to modern concepts of management. His career began as a mining engineer, later moving into research geology for Comambault. The company was struggling however, Fayol turned the operation round. Upon retiring he published his works – a comprehensive theory of administration.
The ability and means by which an organisation is run, requires for strong managerial expertise and leadership. The ability to realistically plan, organise resources effectively and efficiently, co-ordinate and control resources in this every changing, complex, dynamic environment is at the forefront of quality managerial practices. Good management has demonstrated itself more important than ever, with the peak Global Financial crisis in 2008/2009 proving that the historical theory’s and innovations in managerial practices are absolutely paramount to thriving economic prosperity. It is through the functions, approaches included in the literature of Henri Fayol’s 1949 English translated General and Industrial Management, Henry Mintzberg’s
Today the business community considers Fayol 's classical management theory as a relevant guide to productively managing staff. It would be safe to assume that Henri Fayol 's Principles of Management are going to be around for a long time and have an enormous impact on the lives of many people.