Henri Fayol and His Continued Relevance in an Evolved System - Essay Example

Section/# Henri Fayol and His Continued Relevance in an Evolved System Born in 1841 of French parents working in Istanbul, Turkey, Henri Fayol is known by many as the father of modern management theory and concept. To this day, text books around the world reference his name when introducing the topic of management and practical management theory. However, the extent to which Fayol is still relevant in modern management is a much disputed topic. Many believe that his contributions, although at one time relevant, have long since become obsolete with the changing nature of business and the world. Others argue that because of the basic and simple premises of his functions of management, even though the economy has drastically changed, Fayol continues to retain a great deal of relevance on the topic. This analysis will concur with the latter assessment as it is this author’s belief that although Fayol could probably not have conceived of our current economic system, his functions of management are as essentially relevant to a service oriented economy as they were an industrial economy. Fayol’s functions of management are as follows: 1- To forecast and plan; 2- To organize; 3- To command; 4- To coordinate; 5- To control. As such, consider a business manager today (whether the business be an IT support center, or a steel mill) has very much the same managerial tasks. Imagine the tasks that these managers are responsible for on a daily basis. Though the industries are nearly at the polar opposite ends of the spectrum, management’s tasks remain incredibly similar. The manager must forecast and plan, i.e. the manager must be able to draw inference from incoming inputs and use those inputs to forecast future actions (Amsden et al, 1996). Regardless of the industry, this remains a primary function of management and one that simply cannot be disregarded. Likewise, the manager of both aforementioned firms must organize tasks and employees and teams to complete those assigned tasks. Without organizational skill, direction is lost and management becomes impossible. Accordingly, the ability of a manager to command the progress and workflow remains a vital component of ensuring that the work is performed according to the rubric laid out in the planning and forecasting function. Furthermore, without coordination of people, teams, and workflow, it is nearly impossible to imagine any task (whether at a high end service company or a basic industrial firm) would ever be completed satisfactorily. Lastly, with respect to control, regardless of the type of firm the manager is responsible for governing, he/she must necessarily receive feedback upon the overall process and adjust his/her methods and inputs accordingly. Because these principles of management are so basic, so intrinsic to the overall notion of proper direction in a firm, it is hard to imagine a world in which the guiding principles of Fayol would not be manifest (Gannon et al, 1999). In short, due to the simplicity of these functions, they retain the utmost relevance even in today’s service driven economy. In their work, “Revisiting Fayol: Anticipating Contemporary Management”, Parker and Ritson determined that Fayol’s works were far more visionary and insightful than previously thought. They determined that elements of Fayol’s analysis transcended the boundaries of the era of industrial management which Fayol was speaking. Further, the study uncovered, “traces of ideas and concepts that anticipated aspects of the human relations movement, systems-based contingency theory, the movement towards greater employee involvement in decision-making and elements of knowledge management” (Parker/Ritson, 2005). Rather than Fayol being merely considered as a father of management theory, the analysis gives evidence for the fact that Fayol’s writings, personal background, career, and ideas all lend credence to the fact that he was more forward-thinking and visionary as to the evolution of management than most sources give him credit for. Fayol should not be judged merely upon his merits as a founding father of management study but upon the continued relevance of his works to the field. It is the belief of this author that as long as Fayol’s tools and measurements of management continue to be of use and continue to adequately define the field, he should be viewed not merely as a founding architect of the field but as a relevant source to be studied. Lastly, Fayol’s multi-dimensional career and interests help to cast him as an individual who was intimately aware of market evolutions and changes; as such, it is not difficult to understand why his elements of management have stood the test of time without requiring redaction (Pryor, 2010). However, not all current scholarship agrees with the previous assessment regarding the salience and current usefulness of Fayol’s theories of management. These disagreements mainly spring from the belief that Fayol no longer retains his relevance to the field due to the systemic change that the collective economy has undergone throughout the past 100 years (Tsoukas, 1994). As demonstrated above, these systemic changes have greatly transformed the world’s economy; however, they have no demonstrated a remarkable enough change to the field of management to necessitate disregarding Fayol’s functions of management. Others assume that Fayol was too formulaic and his approach to management emphasized an intractable approach to management (Hales, 1999). However, through a more careful analysis of Fayol’s works, it can be clearly seen that chose to more holistic in his approaches rather than formulaic. These facts coupled with the additional fact that Fayol held many positions during his life (in nearly every imaginable level of the corporate structure) lend credence to the notion that Fayol intimately understood and empathized with the varying nuances of management and integrated these into his functional theories. In fact, unlike many of the authors that write copiously on Fayol and his theories, Fayol himself was not only a theorist but a practitioner. As a result, he was likely more adeptly suited to explain the complexities of management than other non-practitioners. Because of Fayol’s unique vantage point and the fact that his ideas are measurably relevant even over one hundred years after they were first published, it would be foolish to disregard the theories of Fayol based solely on the fact that he crafted them under different economic circumstances than currently define our world economic system. Furthermore, it is the belief of this analysis that Fayol maintains a great deal of relevance in the field because his theories are still applicable and useful without respect to the field or genre of work they are applied. As such, Fayol’s theories should not be disregarded as a mere fore-father of modern management theory and practice. Bibliography Amsden, R., Ferrat, T., & Amsden, D. (1996). TQM: Core Paradigm Changes. Business Horizons, vol. 39, issue 6, pages 6-14. Gannon, M., Flood, P., & Paauwe, J. (1999). Managing Human Resources in the Third Era: Economic Perspectives. Business Horizons, vol. 42, issue 3, pages 41-47. Hales, C. (1999).Why do Managers do what they do? Reconciling Evidence and Theroy in Accounts of Managerial Work. British Journal Management, 10:335-350. Parker, L.D., & Ritson, P.A. (2005). Revisiting Fayol: Anticipating Contemporary Management. British Journal of Management, 16:175-194. Pryor, M.G. & Taneja, S. (2010). Henri Fayol, Practitioner and Theoretician - Revered and Reviled. Journal of Management History. 16(4):489-503. Tsoukas, H. (1994). What is Management? An Outline of a Metatheory. British Journal of Management, 5:289-301. Read More