Management Control an Organization Efficiently

Management is a study in which there have been diverse theories and ideas of how it should be carried out thus it can be regarded as a wide subject. The field of management and its theories have proved to be regularly uncertain in the way it should be carried out.

However, it is important for mangers to have the ability to control an organization efficiently, in order to make use of any opportunity that might present itself. In 1916, Henri Fayol detailed his ideas of management should be carried out. However, the more recent works from Henry Mintzberg have been critical of, and put to question Fayol’s ideas of management. About five decades ago managers from English speaking nations discovered Henry Fayol’s work in management. Since then His, General and Industrial Management (1949), theories have had a profound effect on the study of management and how it is practised worldwide. However, two decades on, when Fayol’s work translated into English, a different theory was coined and written, the Nature of Managerial Work (1973) by Henri Mintzberg, boldly claimed that Fayol’s work was just “folklores”. In this essay I will set out to discuss the extent to which Fayol’s quintessential theories of management have been made largely redundant by more modern ideas of management such as the more intricate views of Henry Mintzberg’s (1973).

Management as a task was defined by Fayol as involving five elements which were planning, organising, coordinating, commanding, and controlling, general and Industrial Management (1949). Organising would Intel building up two way system of promises, distribute the workload and lay clear guidelines of responsibility and authority.  The planning process involved trying to predict events that would occur in the future and take outline the necessary steps the organisation would implement in order to deal with this prediction. Commanding meant giving out instruction to do the project and its activities. The control stage involved ensuring everything run smoothly and in uniformity through the set rules and authority. Fayol denounced the views that management could be an entitlement or that it was a duty solely for the head of an organisation, instead He believed it was the responsibility of all the people in the organisation.

Mintzberg (1973) discovered many similar characteristics in five managers’ undertakings, this led to him inferring what a manager’s work intels. He deduced that management was to be carried out in a composite environment in which a manager would not only their management from within the organisation but also outside it. Mintzberg (1973) outlined ten responsibilities of any manger, which would be further broken down into a trio of groups. This trio: roles of decision, roles of information and interpersonal roles. A manager would occupy a role in an organisation due to their authority that would result in an interpersonal role involving being the spearhead, leader and conduit of information. Hence a manager could be the chief decision maker and ‘face’ of the organisation in some cases. Mintzberg derived his work from actual research carried out on working managers. For this reason he accurately shows what tasks managers do. Mintzberg’s stance is Fayol’s functions ‘the actual work of managers is not depicted in any way; they outline fixed unclear targets of managerial work’ (Mintzberg 1971). Whilst carrying out his research, he observed managers and discovered that all activities captured at least a part his ten roles couldn’t be known particularly as one of Fayol’s functions.

Fayol’s theories were cited as lore by Mintzberg and he stated that his theories were “as different from Fayol’s classical view as a cubist abstract is from a Renaissance Painting” (Mintzberg, 1989, pp.9). Over time debate has ensued in relation to “Who is right, Mintzberg or Fayol?” (Duncan, 1999, pp. 32) However, Wren (1994) suggested that Fayol (1949) and Mintzberg (1973) displayed diverging views, while Tsoukas (1994, pp.295) argued that they represented theoretical descriptions that were logically related but “ontological layers of management”.

 One of the statements by Fayol, Mintzberg defined as folklore was “a manager is a reflective, planner”. Management by nature is open-ended (Mintzberg, 1973, pp 30) which in tells the manager had to take up such unrelenting pace and large workload, hence a manager has an infinite goal, meaning there is no end to a manager’s work or ‘finish line’. The time a manager spends on work is at the expense of their own time. The flow of information within the organisation is not discouraged which is highly necessary in managing the organisation this was achieved by the manager opting to be interrupted. The manager would much rather place higher importance on non-routine tasks as compared to usual tasks and information. According to this, Minztberg’s ideas and reason behind them show why he would come to such a conclusion in that aspect of management. It can be said however, that his explanation is not adequate to discredit Fayol’s stance of how important the aspect of planning is in management is and the position it plays. It can be said that planning plays a vital role managerial work. Without planning crucial decision making may be delayed that could lead to mistakes made in the organization (Fayol, 1949).There have been studies that have shown the importance of planning in managerial work and how they correlate. Stagner (1969) for instance showed that the firms’ of 107 executives’ profits was directly correlated to the time taken by those managers when planning. Mintzberg found aspects of Fayol’s theory impractical such his views on a manager’s role in control, organising, demanding and co-operation. Mintzberg believed these tasks were not actually done by a manager in day’s work. Despite this work by Mahoney, Jerdee, and Carrol (1963 to 19165) expanded on fayol’s five functions of management. Hence other studies such as these supported Fayols theories of the work done by managers. The study was carried out on 450 executives of multitude of jobs and stages, it showed they different timetables in regards to carrying out these tasks. In a different study carried out, Allen (1981), A group of 920 executives were surveyed, displayed a multitude of activity planning, 70% took part in formal tasks such as planning and budget preparation. However after looking at both approaches to this concept, it can be said that in today’s society due to how fast paced it is, managers could waste time doing such activities and would rather share the workload while still maintain the final say, hence Mintzberg’s theory would be more favourable to an extent. Hence Fayol’s ideas could be seen as obsolete.