Henri Fayol’s ideas are somewhat of a staple whenever you think what a manager’s job entails, if you were to ask anyone they would usually respond by listing some, if not all of Fayol’s ‘managerial activities’. Just because this is what many people think, it does not mean that this is actually what a manager’s job actually entails, with many other theorists such as FW Taylor, Henri Mintzberg and Fred Luthans offering a different approach to the question.
Fayol said that to manage is to plan, organise, command, co-ordinate and control which are classed as the ‘five managerial activities’ and his reasoning for this stemmed from his own experience from working in managerial activities in different organisations across his life. Through his writing he was able to get to a point where his ideas were that respected that he even worked in advisory roles for the French government. Therefore, to him, that’s what a manager’s job must consist of, right? By being able to reach his ideas from his own experience, it strengthens the facts of it by providing proof as well as a point of reference that can be referred to when analysing his view point. Although by coming to this conclusion from his own experience, you can argue that it may be very narrow minded in the sense it might be very different for another manager, with different factors such as age, culture and the type of organisation.
The view that Fayol holds however can be said to be very ‘idealistic’, he has many presumptions when presenting his ideas such as not taking motivation into account as well as other HR related factors. Being idealistic is fine, although it does bring into play the question of will every manager actually be able to perform the five managerial roles that Fayol identifies? By ignoring the human aspect, it allows us to criticise Fayol’s model, because if a person is not motivated then the manager may find it difficult to plan. It is easier to plan if everybody is motivated because you don’t have to worry about the potential of an employee not finishing their work load in time or not keeping quality up to standard. Not only is this relevant to planning, but also to the other four activities as, if you ignore the human aspect you are ignoring many small minor details that changes every situation slightly.
Although the five managerial activities are fairly narrow, Fayol’s fourteen principles of management actually cover a much broader area whilst still being common sense driven. In his 14 principles of management he goes into greater details of what he believes the manager actually does, as opposed to his five managerial activities in which he believes is what is expected from a manager. The 14 principles give us a clear indication of what is expected from a manager as it sets out individual duties that they must perform, such as ‘Unity of Direction’ in which the manager must ensure that every individual within the organisation must be working to one common goal/principle. In this case, unity of direction is something that would be relevant to every organisation, which goes against a large criticism of Fayol’s model in which many people say that it can’t be applied to every organisation.
Many other profiles in the world of management have actually been quite critical of Fayol’s model, most notably Henri Mintzberg who named 10 roles of management that is split further into three categories being interpersonal, informational and decisional. Unlike Fayol, Mintzberg came to his conclusion from research into what 5 CEO’s actually do which can perhaps lead us to believe that Mintzberg’s model may be more accurate as research was conducted across multiple industries. Although Mintzberg did categorise the roles of managers, he believed that managers are re-active and usually skip from task to task which is actually something that I have being able experience working in the service industry where I would routinely see my manager go from helping in the kitchen, on to the bar, talking to customers as well as simultaneously answering other employees questions. Unlike Fayol who had a major focus on control through planning etc, but it begs the question, is somebody who is constantly switching from task to task with no real end goal ever really in control?
The biggest issue however with Mintzberg’s model is that it is based off of a very small sample size, which perishes in comparison to Fayol’s years of study or Fred Luthans who I will cover in detail later. Being based off of a small sample size it devalues the science behind it, and being research driven is very important when analysing what Mintzberg says. Despite the fact the research he did conduct was with unique managers in unique industries, it doesn’t tell us enough, with many industries existing it still may be coincidental the findings he found and, like Fayol, will not apply to every industry.
Scientific management is a theory produced by FW Taylor who published many books in which his ideas were then developed further until we reached the Principles of Scientific Management (1911). The principle of scientific management is a fairly simple concept when broken down, he said workers should be given one repetitive task so they can master it, managers should give close orders in order to control workers and the workers should be payed a ‘piece rate’.
The goal of scientific management was to find the most efficient way of production, because of this, it is most commonly seen in mass production factories and was actually used in the majority of factories of the early 20th Century which is actually a reason I believe this model is outdated, similarly to Fayol’s. Aspects such as workers being given a piece rate rarely exists in the world we live in today with many pieces of government legislation not permitting it with a greater focus on sustainable living wages. Not only the fact that piece rate in factories has declined significantly, the actual use of mass productions factories has drastically decreased in volume with the rise of e-commerce with many firms opting to use more automated systems. If a model like Taylors and Fayols is based around a declining industry, is it really an effective model? Does it really give us an actual insight on how to manage?
However, to me, scientific management is a very effective model as it breaks down the basics of management to give a very specific set of rules that managers can follow and, as shown through Taylors research is proven to be effective. The actual concept of Scientific Management makes sense as to why it would be plausible and effective, the whole idea behind efficiency and quality leads me to believe that this model when used in the right industry breads the best out of the workforce. Similarly, to Fayol, Taylor’s model has the theme of organising, planning and controlling so in that sense they are similar. As well as the fact that we can’t apply it to every industry, so in the case of Taylor and Fayol his management style is excellent, but only in its isolated world of mass production.
Perhaps the theorist whose model can be described as the most accurate is Fred Luthans, his model was based on extensive research into the behaviours and activities of 44 real managers. However similar he was to Mintzberg and Kotter, he took a slightly different approach as the managers he researched came from many levels, of many different types of organisations. By taking a similar approach to Mintzberg he looked into what managers actually do, but categorised these into four roles as opposed to the three of Mintzberg. With the difference between the two being that Luthans saw networking as something that managers do in their role.