Profile of Henri Fayol, a Founding Father of Management

Profile of Henri Fayol, a Founding Father of Management minimise and CarrierHenri Fayol was a French industrialist and managing machinateor, plumping in the mine attention and looking for appliccapable solution to trading management. He went to school in Lyon (the second self-aggrandizingst city of France) and enrolled at the engineering school of Saint-Etienne (Ecole Nationale des Mines). He received an education as a mine engineer and calibrated in 1860 from this school at the age of 19. He was first utilize as an engineer at Boigues, Rambourg and Co. In 1874, this comp each became Commentry-Fourchambault SA or Comambault). It is measurable to notice he spend all his professional life in the same company experiencing its elaboration and knowing advantageously its structure and employment methods. Fayol was first remarked as an engineer when he wrote a paper proposing a solution to fire hazard, fire fitting and spontaneous combustion in mine, destructing men and installa tions. In 1866, he was appointed director of a starness mine of Commentry at the age of 25. The company was going through expansion and added several(prenominal) some otherwise mines to the company in other part of France such as Monvicq coal mine and Berry Iron Ore Mine. He became the directors of those mines as well at the age of 31. In the same clipping, those expansions did not translated in increase of dividend. Quite the contrary, Fayol had to salute the fact that Comambault was in dire m angiotensin converting enzymetary straits. In the late 1880s, the company had failed to pay dividends for at least 4 years. In 1888, at the age of 47 he became the chief executive officer of the Comambault conglomerate. The impersonal of his mission as a CEO was to make the company practicable again which he did. He recreateed closely with his managers to turn the company around, re principal(prenominal)der inefficient units, investing in research and technology and expanding the geographical ascendant of the company. In 1908, in a discourse he gave he reminded this outcome of industrial historyIn 1888, the company Commentry-Fourchambault was on the verge of vanish in abandoning its plants and in resuming the exhaustion of the mine stocks, when a change of direct office came. Since then, the company prospered again. The companys history shows that its fall and rising atomic number 18 unequivocally an effect of the administrative process employed. This is with the same mines and the same plants, with the same pecuniary resources, in the same commercial situation, the same board of directors, and the same personal that the company raises again to this moment. Therefore, some administrative methods leave the company to its check other methods give it its prosperity back. Work, experience, association and good will of several thousands of people had been sterilized by some dysfunctional administrative process. And other administrative processes emphasiz e all its strength.Fayol was head of a very bountiful argumentation with over 10,000 employees, which at the time, was comparable to todays international companies. He remained CEO until his retirement at the end of WWI, in 1918. Before his retirement in 1916, Fayol published his main disc Administration Industrielle et Generale in the professional return called Bulletin de la Socit de lindustrie minrale. In 1917, he sets up the Centre for administrative Studies (CAS) in Paris. His reflections were published as a book entirely in 1925, the year of his death. This centre was important in fan out his ideas. It organised seminars and colloquium with industrialists, public sector officials of the French put forward, engineers, the military, and miscellaneous academics. The CAS was a plan from which collaboration and further works could be done. From 1921 to 1925, he collaborated to several studies on behalf of the Frenchs public sector. Notably, he produced a study of the Post a nd Telecom subdivision as well as the French Tobacco and Match monopoly.why a founding Father of Management? 1 remarkable feature article about Henri Fayols influence in management is the fact that he is teensy-weensy kn admit comp ard to Taylor (1856-1915) who lived roughly at the same time. The epoch of the expectant developing of the XIX century industry does not explain why one hits more fame than the other. In 1912, Charles de la Poix de Frminville met Taylor and stated to spread the principles of Taylorian governing body of work. Taylors work accostt with the workshop of manufacturing and Fayols with the mining industry and its general management. One must say that one aspects of the relative slow diffusion of Fayols ideas, is due to timing. In 1916 and 1918, France was dealing with the WWI and its aftermath. Although many of Fayols principles he developed in studies during 1921-25 could subscribe to been handling for bettering the management of the French state age ncies and enterprises were not followed. The reason bear to be found in the institutional change of France at the time, whereby France was separating the church from the state in education, the growth of the public sector, effort union and coarse businesses gibe with the rise of professional managers and the pursual in technology development. My face is that, for ideological reason, when the French state was trying to reinforce itself (by establishing national system of education, communization of companies (train system, post telecom, etc.) just also vis--vis the threat of Germany), Fayols pragmatic criticism and vestige to change the states forms of management were not always welcome. The reinforcement of the state deliver industry and the regulation of market by state agencies went well until 1986.That is in the large part, the reason why the French themselves did not escort Henri Fayols work the convenient resource to deal with the management of the Frenchs state ag encies and industries. The US business school considered Henri Fayols works worth teaching their undergraduates. It only since the last 10 years (around the end of the 1990) Frenchs scholars have been studying back their own managerial roots. Despite the history of how Fayols ideas come about, one whitethorn ask us what is important in them to be consider foundational to management thought. In fact, there is, as any classical management thinker, a basic originality in Fayols proposition on the need of management regarding the dealing of the industry.Fayols OriginalityTo a large extend, all management thinkers and practitioners view the management function as the center to organise technical function of the business toward an optimal economic efficiency. In this abide by, Henri Fayol, Frederick Taylor or Alfred Sloan do not differ in their aim. One quite a little find Fayols formulation of the role of management in the industry in a talk he gave in 1900 at the Congrs world-wide des Mines et de la Metallurgie. Fayol makes the following remarksThe technical and commercial services are rather well defined, which is not the pillow slip of the administrative services. The way it is construct and the attribution it fulfils are not well known, its operations are not immediately clear. It does not visibly built, forge, sell or buy but nevertheless, everybody knows that if it does not work well, the company goes downhill.Something on recruitment It is necessary to link surmise and place in engineers education. unless it is about the equalizer of each we may differ. Some think one necessitate to overcharge the programs as well as the lectures given in the engineering schools, other think that we have already reached the limit of theoretical teaching and that one waist our elites youthfulness one or two years that would be better employed in active life.He also make clear in his Book, General and Industrial Management, the difference of adroitnesss and atten tion one needs to deal with engineering work and management work. Fayol drew attention to the need for schools and universities to amend people about administration as a topic of its own right (in conjunction to engineering, and not engineering just). The point of his reflection on the education needs of the engineers was trying to deal with the qualities required to make a good manager rather than relying on the formal rules of engineering, its aura amongst the middle class to provide good job to their kids. For that matter, the list of qualities needed to bewitch in effect(p) manager is rather dissimilar to what is required to be an engineer alonePhysical qualities health, vigor, address (manner of behaving)Mental qualities ability to understand, judge and adapt honourable qualities energy, firmness, willingness to accept responsibility, initiative, tact, loyalty and dignityGeneral educationSpecial knowledge pertaining to the functional context of work, function, technical and so on.Experience knowledge of work, remembrance of lessons from experience.Fayol take the need of education very life-threateningly. He indicates three main sources of issues that can potentially trouble the good education of managers (a) the enigma of industrial concentration, (b) the role of higher(prenominal) technical education and its abexercising of math and (c) mental remnant.The problem of industrial concentrationManaging great business has always presented great difficulties. To get a grasp of it, suffice to glimpse over the various charges a CEO has to take into account. Those difficulties are inherent to the nature of things and have existed at all time. just now what did not exist all the time was the recent industrial development and industrial concentration which increased intimately the proportion of big deals and show the neediness of good CEO.The role of higher education and the abuse of mathematicsWe abuse mathematics in the imprint that more one knows it , more one is able to govern businesses. Also, we are in the belief that their study, more than anything else, develops and makes the judgement correct. Those are mistakes which cause serious issues to our country and which seems to me useful to fight. () A long personal experience taught me that the use of higher mathematics is worthless in business management, and that engineers, pitworkers or steelworkers nearly never use it.I firmly believe that elementary mathematics contribute to form your judgement, as all other branches of general culture. I nevertheless do not believe that an intense higher mathematical culture, imposed without necessity to future engineers has the same effect. The excessive culture of any kind of science is unhealthy to both the physic and the intellect. The studies of mathematics do not make exception. Studied at length with intensity, it leaves intact only the well balanced brains. One sees travel bying mathematicians without common sense and we see numerous men of common sense who are not mathematicians.Intellectual curiosityYou are not prepared to take the direction of a company, counterbalance small. School did not give you the administration, commercial and accountancy notions you need to be a CEO. Even if school would have provided them, you will still lack practice and experience that can only be acquired by the extend to of men and things. () one asks you to bring with you your diploma, reflection, logic and a spirit of note and dedication to the accomplishment of your task.Work to complete your professional knowledge, but do not neglect general instruction. Directors inspiring high esteem and grasp never stopped, you will see, to learn through constant effort. () You belong to the intellect elite, so you should not be uninterested in news, you should be certified of the general ideas agitating modern society in all domains.One sees that Fayol saw that the engineering education (such as he received with its predom ination of mathematics) did not answer the challenge one is facing when dealing with arranging and human matters. He saw in management the field of practice and reflection that was needed in the domain where engineering, although provide efficient techniques for dealing with materials, was unable to address the human aspects. It does not mean that management was a sort of humanism but the normal counter-part of the rationalisation of an organisation (private or public) having in mind that one needs to take a fussy attention to the question of human organisation if one wants an industry to function.Fayols Administrative TheoryAs a result of his experience and of a constant reflection on the way to make corporation work best, in situation of change, he reckons one needs to establish an administrative possibleness which takes into accountThe need of projections. It demands to establish a system of yearly projections for the long term objectives and monthly projections for special a ctivities in the company fitting the world-wide preparation. The role of projection for the personal is to be able to assess what has been achieved as people go on working.To fight bureaucracy by facilitating the face to face relations, avoiding the multiplicity of hierarchies which increase the irresponsibility of the directors. Also one needs to stability in hierarchy and the possibility to reward or punish the use of power.Pragmatism has to be applied in the division of labour by controlling finishs to be always balanced with the situation.The need to use control managers to be able to take decisions rapidly before it turns to be catastrophic.In the general literature in management, Fayol is often seen as the top-down manager that worked out the tools of governance to the distribution of task. In fact, his main counseling was not to formalise the tools of decision making in a naive chart to follow. Fayols point was that an organisation could not be managed with a simplest vi ew concerning both the function of the organisation and its human components. And for that matter, it is first necessary to consider the organisation, not simply from the tasks analysis view following technology industriousness the industry, but as an integration of several key functions. In other words, Fayol invites us to grasp at once the complexity of the management of business organisation by taking into account the following functionsTechniques (production, transformation), commerce (business and sales), pay (capital management and research), security (protection of goods and persons), accounting (balance sheet, inventory, factory price, statistics, etc) and administration (foresight, organisation, domination, coordination and control).Donald Reid (in his paper on Fayol called Fayol From Experience to Theory) make clear that Fayol, as a practitioner, did accumulate a number of industrial and managerial experience before putting his ideas on paper. He kept copious notes of h is observations, having a particular interest in organisational failure and the nature of responsibility and authority among key decision makers. In 1861, Fayol write in his notebook an example of management failure. In one mine, he saw that all work had to be stopped because of an deformity to a working horse. The mine manager was absent and the stable manager had no authority to obtain the replacement of the injured horse. In the case of the horse replacement, it was the inability of the company structure to deal with this technical problem that causes inefficiency. Fayol did identify that authority was required to overrun narrow conception of decision making that did not keep the final objective in mind. Fayol was able to overrun the absence of the stable manager in align to get things done. In this case, one sees that authority is neither authoritative nor working without the flexibleness demanded by the condition of the situation (the production of coal in this case). In his work, General and Industrial Management, he reviewed all aspects of management involved in the running of a business. Concerning the authority, he came with a list of principles wizard of commandHierarchical chain of commandSeparation of powers (authority, subordination, responsibility and control)CentralisationOrder.But he did not concentrate only on authority since his interest was about the functioning of the industrial business in its entirety. Since most of the problems he encountered were not technical in the sense of related to engineering skill but mostly managerial, he came to the conclusion that one needed a certain element of creativity in the managerial practices in order to accommodate industrial realities. For example, he gave the possibility of experienced workers to become supervisors of work groups. In developing working teams with the authority to act and make decisions in the mines, it improved both motivation and effectiveness. The objective was to make them resp onsible for prize and the timing of work. He observe that all employees are involved in the administration of the business to a greater or lesser degree.In his book General and Industrial Management, he draws a comprehensive scene of all his experience. One may call this a general theory. But it is clear that in Fayols words, it is an attempt to generalise the sum of experiences he has observed in managing Comambault in order to deliver a compendium of his ideas that could transcend industry and organisational types. One sees that in keeping the area of management large (from the decision making, the work relationship as well as the extract of human resources) Fayol identified the following principles of management (see text 1 of the variation list)Division of work specialisation of labourAuthority the right to direct the work of others but requiring commensurate responsibility for actions and performanceDiscipline deference and respect for the organisation and fellow worke rsUnity of command one blue-ribbon(prenominal) rather than many in contrast to F W TaylorUnity of direction one agreed plan of action leading to focalise and coordination of effortSubordination of individual interest to the general interest net to incentivise and make employees more valuableCentralisation to achieve the right proportion of centralised and decentralised decision making to optimize personnelscalar chain the chain of authority from top to bottom, allowing also for lateral converse and decision making (the gang plank)Order people and resources in their charm placeEquity equitable employee relations based on respect and kindlinessStability of tenure of personnel to assist in resources planningInitiative encouraging energy and zeal throughout the organisationEsprit de corps building a sense of belonging and team work