Fayol Wrote That the Five

Fayol wrote that the five functions of management are planning, organizing, coordinating, commanding and controlling. Fells (2000) argues that Fayol's work stands the test of time, but that may be more related to the simplicity of Fayol's points rather than the strength of any particular deep insight. Fayol's insights were based on observation of managers, and in that regard little has changed at the fundamental level from his day. However, later work has become far more relevant in light of its depth and greater understanding of the nuances of such processes.

It is unreasonable to conclude that Fayol's work is irrelevant to managers today. Managers do conduct each of those five activities. Even the most contentious functions -- command and control -- are still common despite shifts in the language used to downplay those functions. Command and control may be anachronistic terms, but they are still relevant to management today. Control is directly related to information, and information management is one of the most important functions of management. Indeed, much of modern management thought on both the management of production and of human resources, relates to control. Total quality management, Six Sigma and a range of other management trends all relate to improving the control function. No matter how evolved these theories seem, they still relate to gathering information (control), formulating tactics and strategies (planning) and deploying resources (coordinating, commanding) to achieve specific results. All management thought therefore owes a debt of gratitude to Fayol's initial descriptions of the management function (de Mast, 2007).

Command is downplayed in modern management thought, where soft skills such as transformational leadership and emotional intelligence are emphasized. However, command is analogous to motivation -- getting others to do what needs to be done. Command is not strictly about direct instruction -- although that remains more common that the literature would indicate -- but is about moving people to achieve results. Modern management, for all its emphasis on soft skills, motivation and inspiration, has not done away with command. It has merely introduced a multitude of methods for achieving command, including the direct order giving that is typically associated with the term.

Fayol's work has been incorporated and synthesized with modern management theory. The obviousness of its tenets makes it easy to integrate with modern thought. For example, Yoo, Lemak, and Choi (2006) applied Fayol's principles to Michael Porter's generic strategies. They argue that specific management competencies that Fayol identified are ideal for certain generic strategies. In particular, they argue that several of Fayol's functions are easily applicable to a cost leadership strategy, several others to a differentiated strategy and several to both. This application emphasizes the point that Fayol's work was basic -- stating the obvious it could be argued -- such that it can readily be applied without significant academic rigor to any modern management theory.

Other authors resuscitate the Fayol-Taylor debate, arguing that Fayol's views are archaic when compared to Taylor's contingency-based view of management. Brunsson (2008) argues that Fayol's take on management leads to an overemphasis on control and order, the result of which is a stale management style unsuited for modern management. This point of debate disregards the past sixty years of progress in management and fails to recognize the degree to which Fayol's ideas have been updated. In particular, we can compare Fayol and Taylor in terms of modern contingency theories of leadership. Fayol would be transactional, Taylor transformational, but both are valid in certain circumstances. Fayol is not incongruent with contingency theory -- even if one takes a narrow interpretation of what Fayol's management stands for it must still be understood that these are basic functions described, not the totality of the management process.

There is a disconnect in academia, if not in practice, with regards to understanding the relevance of Fayol's work to modern managers. In the literature oriented to quality control, management systems and production management, there is little doubt that Fayol retains a direct influence on management practice. Fayol was instrumental in introducing scientific methods of inquiry to the management function. This has lead to the entire discipline of quality management, such that all modern QM concepts have at their roots in Fayol's understanding of the management function (de Mast & Does, 2006). Authors critical of Fayol's influence tend to be oriented towards softer forms of management. Such authors fail to see the relevance of Fayol's work in their conception of management as a people-oriented discipline predicated on driving creativity, innovation and oriented towards motivation.

Yet even the people-centric view of management owes a debt to Fayol. Such schools of management eschew the terminology associated with Fayol -- especially "command" and "control" yet those functions are still conducted. Where it may traditionally be viewed that "command" means literally to give orders, two points must be made. The first is that people still do that. Most business is conducted on the basis of command. There is no protracted negotiation undertaken to motivate an administrative assistant to photocopy files -- this is done by command. The second point is that even where the command function has evolved away from giving orders, managers are still giving commands, albeit using different psychological techniques. Managers are still finding ways to request that employees behave in a certain way, or perform certain functions. Motivation and inspiration may be required to drive creativity at an organization, but management does so because there are specific needs that must be met (such as new product introduction targets). Motivation is little more than a touchy-feely version of "command." The significant change is that the language of management has become politicized (French, 2009).