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Fayol 's Theory Of General Industrial Management

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By the time Henri Fayol had finished his theory, General Industrial Management, in 1916, which was based on his reminiscence as a successful turnaround of a major mining company from depths of failure; he set out to illustrate management as being a separate entity to other jobs within an organisation as he would say although “technical” and “commercial” “function” were “clearly defined”, “administrative” education was lacking. In his theory he introduced his five duties a manager had to follow to be called effective: plan, organise coordinate, command, and control and added to this fourteen principles he felt managers should use as reference to conduct the five duties. However Fayol was very much an idealist his theory was based on what a complete manager should be like and gave the view of managers taking control from behind a desk, yet critics, most influential being the academic Henry Mintzberg, who released his work in 1973, were more realists and saw a manager life as chaotic, involved and interactive, arguing what Fayol was portraying is not possible, and outdated. The aim of this argument will be to evaluate both systems, by looking at cons and pros of the respected systems, and illustrate how Fayol has indeed passed the “test of time” as despite huge changes in industry today, such as growth of globalisation and digitalisation, and Fayol’s manager would be the more likely to lead an accomplished business. To start of I will attempt to introduce the positive

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