Strengths and weaknesses of Henri Fayol’s theory Firstly, Fayol’s theory include modern phenomena(Brooks, 2009), such as teamwork, authority, hierarchy, command etc. In recent decades, authority, hierarchy all involve and appear in the modern organization and that is what an organization really matter about. Therefore, Fayol’s model is plausible and it is still relevant to today’s organization although he did his study almost 100 years ago.
Furthermore, Henri Fayol was a pioneer of management theory(Pryor & Taneja, 2010), therefore a lot of people may follow his classical view. In addition, Fayol have devoted 30 years in leading a French mining company, which means he has 30 years experience of dealing with supervision and managing lower layer of staff(Fayol,1949), so his classical management theories are built upon his own experience and can still applied in today’s management.
Therefore, these ideas are not build up by his imagination and without substantial evidence, but it is based on his own management experiences. Nonetheless, Henri Fayol’s theory and principles tend to be criticized by many author. For example: March and Simon(1993) argue that Fayol’ idea is contradictory; Clegg and Dunkerley(1980) asserted Fayol’s management ideas is lack of coherence and accuracy; Mintzberg(1973, 1975, 1989) even describe his ideas as “folkore”. Likewise, Archer(1990) mentioned that the classical theory was criticized by academic in the US in the 1940s.
The Term Paper on Learning From Past Management Ideas part 1
LEARNING FROM PAST MANAGEMENT IDEAS George Santayana (1863-1952) was a Spanish-American philosopher, poet and humanist who said: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. (The Life of Reason). It is said that contemporary theories of management have the tendency to constitute and assist in construing the dynamic macrocosm of current organizational environments. However, ...
In addition, the recognition and incorporation of Fayol’s work is no longer widespread in contemporary MBA textbooks(Archer,1990).
In fact, Fayol’s classical theory focused on the functions of management, and ignores the behavior of mangers. In Fayol’s theory, he assumes labour are compliant, they do what the manager expected and taught. In fact, labour always influenced by the real condition and working environment. For example: labour may easily affected by their mobile phone, the boredom of work and other situation.
Furthermore, Fayol neglected the motivation of labour, motivation can directly improve the performance of workforce, while Fayol expected the labour are all compliant. Moreover, a lot of people claim that perspective of Fayol’s theory is too idealistic(Pryor & Taneja, 2010).
Perrow(1973) mentioned that Fayol’s management model is simple-minded. Mintzberg(1989) also quoted that” if you ask managers what they do, they will most likely tell you that they plan, organize, co-ordinate, and control. Then watch what they do.
Do not be surprised if you can not relate what you see to those four words”. He (Mintzberg, 1973) argues that Fayol expected the employees follow the five process of management, they plan, organize, coordinate, command, control. However, in the real world people do not work like what Fayol expected. Indeed, employees are not machine, they are easily being changed by other people or conditions. So Fayol’s model is too idealistic about the employees and he neglected the fact that employees can be easily affected.
