Revisiting Fayol: Anticipating Contemporary Management

Abstract

This study argues that in classifying Fayol as a founding father of the Classical Management School, we have to some extent misrepresented this still important management theorist. The received Fayol portrayed in contemporary texts invariably emerges as a caricature of a much more insightful, complex, visionary and rounded management thinker. This study re-examines Fayol's personal and career history, as well as the arguments presented in his original work, General and Industrial Management. It finds that he was a much more complex and multidimensional figure than his conventional stereotype today, and that his management theories embraced a wider spectrum of approaches and concepts than traditionally identified with the classical management school of thought. In marked contrast to his traditional portrayal, this study uncovers 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.

What do small business owner-managers do? A managerial work perspective

“…Taking this into account, the research proposition of a relationship between the process and roles approaches with the work carried out by the manager of a small company can be accepted. This result corroborates the propositions of Lamond Parker and Ritson (2005a;2005b) and Pryor and Taneja (2010), which are used not only by Henri Fayol's process approach, but also by Henry Mintzberg's roles approach to describe the manager's activities at high hierarchical levels. Considering this, the two approaches should be seen as complementary and non-exclusive.…”

Changes in the Role of Middle Manager: A Historical Point of View

“…So with this author a concept of administration different than Taylor's appears: management does not consist of a purely technical planning and control of the workplace, or of the rigid application of a set of operating rules, but rather of know-how. Fayol [6] thinks that the science of management is not confined to the rigid application of certain rules because he observed the contingent and unique character of human acts. In fact, he uses the term "principles" rather than "rules 1 ".…”

“…Another issue that we cannot overlook is how Barnard refers to the issue of authority in relation to communication: Barnard argues that authority is what links communication with the willingness of individuals to cooperate, because authority depends as much on a cooperative attitude from the organization's staff members as it does on the communication system. Regarding the objective nature of authority, Barnard [8] establishes a distinction of interest that refers to the authority of position, which is what an individual has "merely because of the advantage of his position," and managerial authority, which is attributed to certain individuals for their superior ability -knowledge, intelligence -regardless of their position 6 . In this sense, Barnard believes that one of the main functions of managers is to serve as a channel of communication which facilitates the coordination of the activities of other members within the organization.…”

Understanding the rift, the (still) uneasy bedfellows of History and Organization Studies

“…By going back to the archive OS scholars might be surprised to find that the basis of some central claims within their field are not as clear-cut as is often assumed. For instance an article by Parker and Ritson (2005) provides an example of how an historical work can go back to the past and read a theory in a way different from the current one, which had been taken for granted and enshrined as a kind of 'truth' after decades of indirect narration and reductionist simplification. The works of…”