Henri Fayol is greatly acknowledged as the initial pioneer and advocate of the duty of management Parker and Ritson, 2005 His management ideas were first proposed in the first 1900s. Despite many criticisms, Fayol's theories still form the basis of management techniques and teachings in the 21st century. Taking some articles for reference point, this essay will mainly analyse the advantages and drawbacks of Fayol's idea of five functions of management in modern corporations by some examples. There are about three main parts in this essay you start with the advantages. And in the primary body of this article, based on some academic studies, there are about seven parts speaking about the advantages and down sides of Fayol's idea of five functions of management. A finish will be made finally.
There is without doubt that Fayol is most beneficial known for a three-fold contribution to management theory. Among his efforts, the concept of five functions of management will probably be worth discussing all the time. Fayol identified five key functions of management and these functions of managerial activity are: forecasting and planning, organizing, coordination, order and control. Corresponding to Fayol, forecasting will involve analyzing the near future and drawing a plan of action (Pugh ad Hichson, 2007). And as for organizing, Fayol presumed that an organization's structure was important, as it can facilitate the maximum conduct of its business activities (Pugh and Hichson, 2007). Regarding to Pugh and Hichson (2007), in his original writing, Fayol used the word "demand" to demonstrate a manager's responsibility to lead and immediate employees to the achievement of organizational goals and strategies. About the function of coordination, Fayol made an indicator that managers should bind along, unify and harmonize all the organization's activities and attempts. In modern management practice, this is explained into that the professionals should be responsible for ensuring all the organizational business activities are coordinated to make the employees can unify collectively within one section or among different departments. The last not the least function of management is control. Fayol acknowledged the value of control in a corporation and support so it ensures "everything occurs in conformity with established rules and indicated command line".
In the article of "Fayol-standing the test of time", McLean (2011) firstly introduced the articles of the five functions of management and explained that in contemporary society, there are some features of these functions to development of the enterprises. First, McLean (2011) stated that with the introduction of globalized knowledge overall economy, the talents of forecasting and planning can gain success in the competition. Second, arranging can ask the managers to handle an appropriate infrastructure, that will boost the organization's system, resources, steps, procedures and services and enable knowledge to be disseminated to prospects who need it, when they want it. Third, McLean (2011) also explained that control is one of the most crucial responsibilities of your manager and under the control of the professionals. In order of the managers, the insurance policies and strategies can be integrated regarding to plan and within budget, established timescales and allocated resources. Fourth, under the function of command, the managers can form a thorough knowledge of their workers, which can generate a positive emotional agreement that engages employees with their jobs and the business. Also, Fayol's managerial functions are frequently cited as the inspiration for the contemporary practice of dividing managerial activity (and management textbooks) into the functions of planning, leading, managing and handling (Davidson and Griffin, 2000; Lewis, Goodmand and Fandt, 1995).
As for the organizing, Fayol believed that an organization's framework was important, as it facilitated the most effective conduct of its business. Whether there are benefits of this idea or not remains an wide open question, In the article of "Fayol-standing the test of time", Neglect Jacqueline McLean explained that in modern day society, managing can ask the managers to carry out an appropriate infrastructure, that may optimise the organization's system, resources, procedures, processes and services and permit knowledge to be disseminated to people who require it, when they need it. Meanwhile, arranging also can assimilate all kinds of resources of the firms, including recruiting, financial and materials resources. So are there some advantages about the idea. And this concept is also influencing the structure of the firms and most of organizations pay more focus on the building of the organizational composition. The KFCЇјone of the most famous and important fast food chain restaurants, is definitely paying its focus on the building of the composition all the time. In 2004, with the AIV distributing quickly in Asia, most of the KFC consumers quitted the line of looking forward to KFC, never eating rooster. Especially in Vietnam, the most AIV-hit country, KFC business was confronted with an emergency. But KFC then modified its organizational structure, updating the Fried Rooster with Fried Seafood. So, finally it regained a big success. Under the instruction of Fayol's notion about the organizing, many organizations find out about the importance of the structure and focus on building their organizational graph and therefore gain success. In fact, the building of the organizational structure should fit the introduction of the organization.
As the saying goes, "preparedness ensures success and unpreparedness spells failure". So does the development of one organization. Relating to Fayol, forecasting consists of analysis of the future and attracting up an idea of action. Relating to this Fayol's principle, some authors viewed that there are some advantages. In this article of "Fayol-standing the test of time", McLean (2011) stated that with the introduction of globalized knowledge economy, the talents of forecasting and planning can gain success in the competition. In this article of "The building blocks of Henri Fayol's administrative theory", Mr. Wren, Mr. Bedeeian and Mr. Air flow stated that the most crucial of the means which one must use to ensure business success was planning. To create a business, the founders need capital manpower and time and really should have outlets for the products or service. To forecast these needs and providing to them is the primary responsible of the managers. So Fayol's strategy about planning has its advantages. Looked after improves the development of the companies in contemporary times. Due to the loss of e-mail, Morgan Stanley paid more than billions of dollars. But this event is just one idea of the iceberg of the suffering a great number of cost which is induced by the inappropriate information management. Confronted with this problem, Uk Airway made plan and forecasting and declared its commercial goal: to automate more and more function and try their best to develop customers' self-help service system, such as electronic digital solution, and even that customers can printed their seat tickets in their own home. This strategy made English Airway standard protocol the development lifeline of the companies designedly.
Although there are lots of advantages of Fayol's concept of the five functions of management, there are some disadvantages of these. For the forecasting and planning, when a business made a good planning, it will get a great success. If not, there will be a big failure, just as the saying goes "Changes always exceed plans". As McLean (2011) mentioned in this article of "Fayol-standing the test of time" that the globalised knowledge market and the occurrence of ubiquitous change and competition make forecasting, planning and strategising key managerial activities", forecasting and planning are in the same time the main reason behind an organization inability. HP, a big technological products dealer of the world, is often pushing its employees to go forward with their goals, that are planned by the business. According to HP official Website, in 2010Їјin accordance with its plan, HP purchased Hand company with the Web-based Operating System to get itself to a higher level. But because of this, the new product with the WebOS could not compete with ipad and was not popular with the consumers. In 2011, HP declared to stop the research of WebOS. So to get Palm with a whole $1. 2 Billion is absolutely not a wise choice. A great many other organizations on earth are also always following the guidelines of forecasting and planning notion in Fayol's management theory, but only a good plan is definately not enough in modern day competitive framework.
The other disadvantage originates from the function of command and control in Fayol's theory. Matching to Wren, Bedeian and Breeze (2002), the command word made by the bigger expert and which, be it immediate or through successive levels in the organization, should reach all parts of the business, and the responses should return in the slow sense, either immediately or through the levels, to the central authority. Thus a business can operate smoothly. But there's also counterviews, who consider that the increased order and control will damage personal satisfaction and their self-respect. In this article of "Fayol's 14 principles of management then and now: a platform for controlling today's organizations", Rodrigues explained that if the professionals can separate their managerial work from the real work obviously, they can have energy to give attention to the mark of the introduction of their own companies and package with the public relations beyond your companies. In this article "Henri Fayol as strategies: a nineteenth century commercial turnaround", Wren mentioned that because of the hierarchy, the professionals can carry out the organization toward its objective. The branches of Nokia in China abide by the concept of the former, the strict demand and control. Under this circumstances, the professionals cannot cope with the managerial work given that they have to help employees to cope with a lot of trivial problems. After talk, they improved the procedure strategies and setup the system of "hierarchical transmitting of orders", where the employees in the lower class should record their work to his/her own professionals.
What's more, as McLean (2011) stated, although Fayol possessed a great contribution to management theory, he has been accused of the romanticism of management and offered an almost unrealizable approach to management theorisation. He gave a clear explanation to each of the functions of his management theory and some principles to handle them, however in concrete circumstances, some of them can not be became aware. As Pryor and Taneja (2010) mentioned that in practically Mintzberg vehemently disagreed when he went on to say that if you see managers at work you will find what they do is quite different. Matching to Lamond, Fayol offered us management as we would like it to be and Mintzberg offered us management as it is (Pryor and Taneja, 2010). Therefore, today many managers favour the important role of practice and experience. They think that practice and experience are the only way to get a management certification.
In conclusion, Henri Fayol, as a founding dad of what has become known as the supervision university of management, made some efforts to the management ideas. This essay mainly aimed to go over some statement about Henri Fayol's efforts to management today and criticism of some of his contributions under the topic of "Discussion on Benefits and drawbacks of Fayol's Concept of Five Functions of Management in Modern Companies" and then to learn about the impact of Fayol's management ideas to the management procedures and teachings in the 21st century. It targets the advantages and disadvantages of forecasting and planning, the disadvantages of excessive order and control and the impracticability of the idea in the main body by taking some articles for reference. All in all, Fayol's ideas are valuable and relevant for organizational leaders on the main one hands and debatable on the other hands.
