Henri Fayol - Administration

Description

With two exceptions, Henri Fayol’s theories of administration dovetail nicely into the
bureaucratic superstructure described by Weber. Henri Fayol focuses on the personal
duties of management at a much more granular level than Weber did. While Weber
laid out principles for an ideal bureaucratic organization Fayol’s work is more
directed at the management layer.

Fayol believed that management had five principle roles: to forecast and plan, to
organize, to command, to co-ordinate and to control. Forecasting and planning was
the act of anticipating the future and acting accordingly. Organization was the
development of the institution's resources, both material and human. Commanding
was keeping the institution’s actions and processes running. Co-ordination was the
alignment and harmonization of the groups’ efforts. Finally, control meant that the
above activities were performed in accordance with appropriate rules and procedures.

Fayol developed fourteen principles of administration to go along with management’s

five primary roles. These principles are enumerated below:

 Specialization/division of labor
 Authority with responsibility
 Discipline
 Unity of command
 Unity of direction
 Subordination of individual interest to the general interest
 Remuneration of staff

 Centralization
 Scalar chain/line of authority
 Order
 Equity
 Stability of tenure
 Initiative
 Esprit de corps
 
The final two principles, initiative and esprit de corps, show a difference between
Fayol’s concept of an ideal organization and Weber’s. Weber predicted a completely
impersonal organization with little human level interaction between its members.
Fayol clearly believed personal effort and team dynamics were part of a "ideal"
organization.

Environment

Fayol was a successful mining engineer and senior executive prior to publishing his
principles of "administrative science." It is not clear from the literature reviewed if
Fayol’s work was precipitated or influenced by Taylor’s. From the timing, 1911
publication of Taylor’s "The Principles of Scientific Management" to Fayol’s work in
1916, it is possible. Fayol was not primarily a theorist, but rather a successful senior
manager who sought to bring order to his personal experiences.

Successes

Fayol’s five principle roles of management are still actively practiced today. The
author has found "Plan, Organize, Command, Co-ordinate and Control" written on
one than one manager’s whiteboard during his career. The concept of giving
appropriate authority with responsibility is also widely commented on (if not well
practiced.) Unfortunately his principles of "unity of command" and "unity of
direction" are consistently violated in "matrix management" the structure of choice for
many of today’s companies.

Conclusion

It is clear that modern organizations are strongly influenced by the theories of Taylor,
Mayo, Weber and Fayol. Their precepts have become such a strong part of modern
management that it is difficult to believe that these concepts were original and new at
some point in history. The modern idea that these concepts are "common sense" is
strong tribute to these founders.

Henri Fayol

Fayol was a key figure in the turn-of-the-century Classical School of management

theory. He saw a manager's job as:
  planning
 organizing
 commanding
 coordinating activities
 controlling performance

Notice that most of these activities are very task-oriented, rather than people-oriented.
This is very like Taylor and Scientific Management.

Fayol laid down the following principles of organization (he called them principles of
management):

1. Specialization of labor. Specializing encourages continuous improvement in

skills and the development of improvements in methods.
2. Authority. The right to give orders and the power to exact obedience.
3. Discipline. No slacking, bending of rules.
4. Unity of command. Each employee has one and only one boss.
5. Unity of direction. A single mind generates a single plan and all play their part
in that plan.
6. Subordination of Individual Interests. When at work, only work things
should be pursued or thought about.
7. Remuneration. Employees receive fair payment for services, not what the
company can get away with.
8. Centralization. Consolidation of management functions. Decisions are made
from the top.
9. Scalar Chain (line of authority). Formal chain of command running from top
to bottom of the organization, like military
10.Order. All materials and personnel have a prescribed place, and they must
remain there.
11.Equity. Equality of treatment (but not necessarily identical treatment)
12.Personnel Tenure. Limited turnover of personnel. Lifetime employment for
good workers.
13.Initiative. Thinking out a plan and do what it takes to make it happen.
14.Esprit de corps. Harmony, cohesion among personnel.

Out of the 14, the most important elements are specialization, unity of command,
scalar chain, and, coordination by managers (an amalgam of authority and unity of
direction).
Fayol believed management theories could be developed, then taught (to students of Grandes écoles).
His theories were published in a monograph titled General and Industrial Management (1916). In doing
so, he stated," ...starting a general discussion- that is what I am trying to do by publishing this survey, and
I hope that a theory will emanate from it."

His theories and ideas were ideally a result of his environment; that of a post revolutionized France in
which a republic bourgeois was emerging. A bourgeois himself, He believed in the controlling of workers
in order to achieve a greater productivity over all other managerial considerations. However, through
reading General and Industrial Management, it is apparent that Fayol advocated a flexible approach to
management, one which he believed could be applied to any circumstance whether in the home, the
workplace, or within the state. He stressed the importance and the practice of forecasting and planning in
order to apply these ideas and techniques which demonstrated his ability and his emphasis in being able
to adapt to any sort of situation. In General and Industrial Management he outlines an agenda whereby,
under an accepted theory of management, every citizen is exposed and taught some form of
management education and allowed to exercise management abilities first at school and later on in the
workplace.[citation needed]

"Everyone needs some concepts of management; in the home, in affairs of state, the need for managerial
ability is in keeping with the importance of the undertaking, and for individual people the need is
everywhere in greater accordance with the position occupied. '

- excerpt from General and Industrial Management

[edit]Discussion

Fayol has been described as the father of modern operational management theory (George, p. 146).
Although his ideas have become a universal part of the modern management concepts, some writers
continue to associate him with Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor's scientific management deals with the
efficient organisation of production in the context of a competitive enterprise that has to control its
production costs. That was only one of the many areas that Fayol addressed. Perhaps the connection
with Taylor is more one of time, than of perspective. According to Claude George (1968), a primary
difference between Fayol and Taylor was that Taylor viewed management processes from the bottom up,
while Fayol viewed it from the top down. George's comment may have originated from Fayol himself. In
the classic General and Industrial Management Fayol wrote that "Taylor's approach differs from the one
we have outlined in that he examines the firm from the "bottom up." He starts with the most elemental
units of activity—the workers' actions—then studies the effects of their actions on productivity, devises
new methods for making them more efficient, and applies what he learns at lower levels to the hierarchy...
(Fayol, 1987, p. 43)." He suggests that Taylor has staff analysts and advisors working with individuals at
lower levels of the organization to identify the ways to improve efficiency. According to Fayol, the
approach results in a "negation of the principle of unity of command" (p. 44). Fayol criticized Taylor’s
functional management in this way. “… the most marked outward characteristics of functional
management lies in the fact that each workman, instead of coming in direct contact with the management
at one point only, … receives his daily orders and help from eight different bosses…” (Fayol, 1949, p. 68.)
Those eight, Taylor said, were (1) route clerks, (2) instruction card men, (3) cost and time clerks, (4) gang
bosses, (5) speed bosses, (6) inspectors, (7) repair bosses, and the (8) shop disciplinarian (p. 68). - [1] -
This, Fayol said, was an unworkable situation, and that Taylor must have somehow reconciled the
dichotomy in some way not described in Taylor's works.

Fayol's desire for teaching a generalized theory of management stemmed from the belief that each
individual of an organization at one point or another takes on duties that involve managerial decisions.
Unlike Taylor, however, who believed management activity was the exclusive duty of an organizations
dominant class. Fayol's approach was more in sync with his idea of Authority which stated that the right to
give orders should not be considered without the acceptance and understanding of responsibility.

Noted as one of the early fathers of the Human Relations movements, Fayol expressed ideas and
theories with practices which differed from Taylor in that they showed flexibility and adaptation as well as
stressed the importance of Interpersonal Interaction among employees. [citation needed]

Fayol believed that animosity and unease within the workplace occurred among employees in different
departments often due to communication in writing; i.e. letters, (or in current times) e-mails. Among
scholars of organizational communication and psychology, e-mails and letters as a form of
communication in work are said to induce or solidify the idea of importance of an individual within the
workplace and furthermore give way to selfish thinking which leads to arguments and conflict among
employees.[citation needed]

Fayol expressed this idea in his book by stating," in some firms... employees in neighboring departments
with numerous points of contact, or even employees within a department, who could quite easily meet,
communicate with each other in writing... there is to be observed a certain amount of animosity prevailing
between different departments or different employees within a department. The system of written
communication usually brings this result. There is a way of putting an end to this deplorable system and
that is to forbid all communication in writing which could easily and advantageously be replaced by verbal
ones."

While Fayol's theories are typically referred to as rigid and inflexible, it is practices and theories such as
these which show flexibility in his theories of management. He developed and used theses ideas in order
to diagnose a problem and eventually find solutions which provided methods to work around and fix these
situations. This all led to his general idea of controlling employees in order to achieve increased
productivity.
Fayol also expressed ideas which would later on lead to influence Systems and Contingency theories.
The two are said to have emerged as a result of management theorists' desire to integrate ideas of the
human relation theories within management which is what Fayol's General theory of Management relied
upon.