Merit and demerit of Henri fayol's 14 principle of management
Answers
There is no doubt that Fayol is best known for a three-fold contribution to management theory. Among his contributions, the concept of five functions of management is worth discussing all the time. Fayol identified five key functions of management and these functions of managerial activity are: forecasting and planning, organizing, coordination, command and control. According to Fayol, forecasting involves analyzing the future and drawing a plan of action (Pugh ad Hichson, 2007). And as for organizing, Fayol believed that an organization's structure was important, as it can facilitate the optimum conduct of its business activities (Pugh and Hichson, 2007). According to Pugh and Hichson (2007), in his original writing, Fayol used the term "command" to illustrate a manager's responsibility to lead and direct employees towards the achievement of organizational goals and strategies. About the function of coordination, Fayol made a suggestion that managers should bind together, unify and harmonize all the organization's activities and efforts. In contemporary management practice, this can be explained into that the managers should be responsible for making sure that all the organizational business activities are coordinated to make the employees can unify together within one department or among different departments. The last not the least function of management is control. Fayol recognized the importance of control within an organization and support that it ensures "everything occurs in conformity with established rules and expressed command".
In the article of "Fayol-standing the test of time", McLean (2011) firstly introduced the contents of the five functions of management and stated that in contemporary society, there are some advantages of these functions to development of the enterprises. First, McLean (2011) stated that with the development of globalized knowledge economy, the abilities of forecasting and planning can gain success in the competition. Second, organizing can ask the managers to carry out an appropriate infrastructure, which will optimize the organization's system, resources, procedures, processes and services and enable knowledge to be disseminated to those who need it, when they need it. Third, McLean (2011) also stated that control is one of the most important responsibilities of a manager and under the control of the managers. Under control of the managers, the policies and strategies can be implemented according to plan and within budget, set timescales and allocated resources. Fourth, under the function of command, the managers can develop a thorough knowledge of their employees, which can generate a positive psychological contract that engages employees with their jobs and the organization. What's more, 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, organizing and controlling (Davidson and Griffin, 2000; Lewis, Goodmand
Henry Fayol created the Fayolism Theory of Administrative Management. According to his theory there are 6 primary functions such as Forecasting, planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and monitoring and 14 principles of management such as Division of work, authority, discipline, unity of command, unity of direction, subordination of individuals, remuneration, centralization, scalar chain, order, equity, stability, initiative, and esprit de corps.
Merits :
It is an extremely comprehensive way to deal with management techniques, and it proves to work.
It contains anything and everything that is needed to do in a management position to ensure success.
Demerits:
It is purely based on the harmony among people to form a strong management team; however, if mistakes are made it can ruin the entire strength of the team.