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Fayol's Theory Of Management

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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.
As noted by Smith and Boyons (2005), Fayol generated theory on his own experience instead of empirical working which is

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