Mintzberg and Management Essay

Throughout the 20th century a beefed-up focus was move on the principles behind prudence with Henri Fayols 1916 takings judicatory Industrielle et Gnrale being one of the beginning books drawed solely at deciphering and chthonicstanding the intricate concepts of management. In his book Fayol presents his genuine model of management from the perspective on an executive.Fayol lists and discusses fourteen principles of management which, although no(prenominal)-exhaustive, provides a guide on the execution of what he proposed to be the five chief(a) processes of management. These five primary processes consisted of planning, organizing, commanding, organise and controlling which advocated Fayols support of a dynamic system of management. In response to changing contexts, early(a) refreshful theories contain been placed forward by other distinguished academia such as heat content Mintzberg (1973), John Kotter (1982) and C.P. Hales (1986) which offer more coinciding perspect ives on the concept of management.Born in 1841 Henri Fayol had, after a collar decade career as a mining practitioner, committed himself to the publicity of his theories on administration in 1916 through the publication of his book Administration Industrielle et Gnrale up until his death in 1925. contextually influenced by the bourgeois environment of a post revolutionized France, Fayol advocated the nonion of a flexible system of management which could be applied to more than clean one gear upting.In his book, Fayol devotes more time and focuses on the five processes of management in contrast to the fourteen management principles as claimed by (Fells, M.J., 2000, p. 358). The initiative element, planning, is defined both to assess the future and make provision for it (Fayol, 1949, p.43). He goes on to describe that this dynamic plan must take into wee-wee out a list of detailors such as resources, work-in-progress, and future trends. Organizing considers the functional comp onents of organizations on with the personnel and discusses the ideal conditions required of them. Commanding considers the responsibility that falls on every motorcoach.The goal of managers is to achieve maximum contribution from personnel towards the benefit of the company through a number of factors. An example of these factors would be extermination of the unproductive, having a thorough knowledge of personnel and their respective binding agreements and an aim to be a subroutine model. The third element ofmanagement is coordinating which is defined as the harmonisation of resources in their optimum proportions in lay to achieve results (Fayol, 1949, p. 103).The indicators of a well coordinated organization include in force(p) departments which harmonize well with the rest, are well informed of their responsibilities and also work to constantly adjusted schedules based on circumstantial demands. The last element, control, focuses on the timely verification of plan implemen tations. This element is applicable to all the other processes and its sole purpose is to identify any complications, amend any issues and impede future recurrences.Due to their flexibility in implementation, the correlation between the creation of Fayols model and the sharp rise in US productivity levels as well as living standards supports his approach to management (Fells, M.J., 2000, p. 348). Fayols approach is supported by another academic source (Hales, 1989, p. 12) which claims that Fayol grasped the gist of management through his classical formulation of the management functions.In 1973, Henry Mintzberg provided a new conceptualization about the roles of managers through his book The character of Managerial Work. Through his composition Mintzberg proposed and argued that the previously accepted role of managers which adhered to a systematic approach of planning, organizing, coordinating, leading and controlling were in fact false as through his diary analysis, Mintzberg was able to demonstrate that the manager is not a planner in a reflective sense, and no amount of admonition in the literature will make him so.His environs is stimulus-response. (Mintzberg, 1973, p. 182). By performing an unstructured observation and interview procedure oer a two week period, Mintzberg concluded the activities of his study managers could be categorised into three sets of behaviors or roles. He conceptualized these clusters of roles as interpersonal, informational and decisions (Pearson et al, 2003, p. 696). Mintzberg also recognizes that all managers at some time exercise each of these rules but also that distinct levels of managers will give different priorities to them (Mumford, 1988, p. 3).In terms of contemporary management, Fayol and Mintzberg have contributed greatly to the understanding regarding the concept of management. Howeverboth authors are not exempt from criticisms regarding their approaches. Fayols approach is widely considered to be too notiona l whilst Mintzbergs approach has been criticized for not being theoretical enough.Despite their differences in approach, fundamentally the two theories not only share the same elements under the guise of differently labelled terms, they compliment each other in terms of validity due to the strong correlation between results regarding the behaviour of managerial positions. (Fells, M.J., 2000, p. 359) supports this judgement as the journalist goes on to state that not only are Fayols principles still relevant, they are interrelated at an elemental level with the model of Mintzberg.(Lamond, 2004, p. 350) reinforces this argument through study conducted on a large sample of male and female managers of different ages and at different managerial levels. Not only did the survey confirm that in that location were indeed a central set of manager functions, as placed forward by Fayol, there were also a generic set of managerial behaviours as proposed by Mintzberg.In concluding despite their contextual differences, Henri Fayols Administration Industrielle et Gnrale and Henry Mintzbergs The Nature of Managerial Work fundamentally share the same inborn elements. This is supported by the results which derived from studies conducted by academic sources such as (Lamond, 2004) as well as the research by other academic sources (Fells, M.J. 2000), (Pearson et al, 2003), (Hales, 1989) and (Mumford, 1988). subsequently both approaches are considered valid and have without a doubt contributed greatly to contemporary management theory.BibliographyFells, M.J. 2000 Fayol stands the test of time. Journal of Management History, vol 6, no.8, 345-360Lamond, D. 2004, A involvement of style reconciling Henri and Henry. Management Decision, vol. 42, no.2 p. 330-356 Pearson, C.A.L. And Chatterjee, S.R. 2003, Managerial work roles in Asia. An experimental study of Mintzbergs role formulation in four Asiatic countries. Journal of Management Development, vol. 22, no. 8 p. 694-707Hales, C. 1989, Management Processes, Management Divisions of travail and Managerial Work Towards a Synthesis. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 9, no. 5/6, p. 9-38Mumford, A. 1988, What Managers Really Do Management Decision, vol. 26, no. 5, p. 28-30