The Roots of Modern Management Principals

Modern management principals are still based upon Fayol’s functions, Mintzberg’s roles and Katz ‘s skills even though they have been around for a long time in our dynamic environment. This is evident if you firstly understand what Fayol’s functions, Minzberg’s roles and Katz’s skills actually are and you look into new management texts and businesses.

Henri Fayol was general manager of a large coal mining company in 1916 he published a book outlining his 5 management functions but it was not until 1949 an English version was published (Helms 2006; Lamond 2004, Bakewell 1994). These functions consists of planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling (Helms 2006). Planning is the process of setting goals that the organisation wants to achieve. This is done by developing a way of completing these goals which are easily changed to meet new needs in the modern environment and having plans for situations that are not desirable for the organisation but can occur. The recruiting, training and evaluation of subordinates is also included in Fayol’s first function as good employees are a factor of good planning (Helms 2006; Schermerhorn et al 2011). All of which is useless with out implementation.

The second of Fayol’s functions is organising. The organising function is about actioning the plans that are developed in the planning. This includes the division of labour and resource and organising of the daily activities to work towards completing the organisations. With proper organisation managers turn the planning ideas into physical action leading to visible and measurable results. (Schermerhorn et al 2011). Once the work has started it must be maintained by good managing.

Commanding another of Fayol’s functions i...

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Lamond, D. (2004), ‘A matter of style: reconciling Henri and Henry’, Management Decision, Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 300-330.

Bakewell, K G B. (1994). Information: The seventh management function? Library Management, vol 15(3), no 28. Retrieved March 24, 2012, from ABI/INFORM Global

Schermerhorn Jr J.R. Management Foundations and Applcations, Milton: John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd, 2011