Henri Fayol: Manager

“The. manager must never be lacking in knowledge of the special profession which is characteristic of the undertaking: the technical profession in industry, commercial in commerce, political in the State, military in the Army, religious in the Church, medical in the hospital, teaching in the school, etc. The technical function has long been given the degree of importance which is its due, and of which we must not deprive it, but the technical function by itself cannot endure the successful running of a business; it needs the help of the other essential functions and particularly of that of administration. This fact is so important from the point of view of the organization and management of a business that I do not mind how often I repeat it in order that it may be fully realized.”

Henri Fayol

Source: Industrial and General Administration, 1916, p. 68 ; as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 6-7

School , Business , Knowledge , Success

“To manage is to forecast and plan, to organize, to command, to coordinate and to control. To foresee and plan means examining the future and drawing up the plan of action. To organize means building up the dual structure, material and human, of the undertaking. To command means binding together, unifying and harmonizing all activity and effort. To control means seeing that everything occurs in conformity with established rule and expressed demand.”

Henri Fayol

Henri Fayol (1916) cited in: Russell C. Swansburg (1996) Management and Leadership for Nurse Managers, p. 1

Effort , Future , Drawing

“The administrative function has many duties. It has to foresee and make preparations to meet the financial, commercial, and technical conditions under which the concern must be started and run. It deals with the organization, selection, and management of the staff. It is the means by which the various parts of the undertaking communicate with the outside world, etc. Although this list is incomplete, it gives us an idea of the importance of the administrative function. The sole fact that it is in charge of the staff makes it in most cases the predominant function, for we all know that, even if a firm has perfect machinery and manufacturing processes, it is doomed to failure if it is run by an inefficient staff.”

Henri Fayol

Source: Henri Fayol addressed his colleagues in the mineral industry, 1900, p. 908

World , Communication , Idea , Failure

“According to the dictionary, to administer is to govern, or to manage a public or private business. It means, therefore, to seek to make the best possible use of the resources available in achieving the goal of the enterprise. Administration includes, therefore, all the operations of the enterprise. But as a result of the usual way of organizing things to facilitate the running of the business, a certain number of activities constitute the special departments; the technical department, the commercial department, the financial department, etc., and the scope of the administrative department is found to be reduced accordingly.”

Henri Fayol

Source: L’exposé des principes généraux d’administration, 1908, p. 911

Way , Business

“satisfying shareholders and employees; labor and management.”

Henri Fayol

Source: L’exposé des principes généraux d’administration, 1908, p. 911

“Would you like to know, for instance, to what extent higher mathematics is used in our two great industries? Well, it is never used at all. Having found this to be the case in my own experience, after quite a long career, I wondered whether I was not an exception; so I made enquiries, and I found that it was a general rule that neither engineers nor managers used higher mathematics in carrying out their duties. We must, of course, learn mathematics that goes without saying but the question is how much must we learn? Up to the present this point has nearly always been decided simply by professors, but it seems to me to be a question in which professors do not count very much, and in which they count less as they become more learned and more devoted to their work. They would like to pass on all their scientific knowledge and they find that their pupils always leave them too soon.”

Henri Fayol

Source: Henri Fayol addressed his colleagues in the mineral industry, 1900, p. 909

Mathematics , Question , Knowledge , Learning

“Management plays a very important part in the government of undertakings: of all undertakings, large or small, industrial, commercial, political, religious or other. I intend to set forth my ideas here on the way in which that part should be played.”

Henri Fayol

Source: General and industrial management, 1919/1949, p.xxi cited in: Harold R. Pollard (1974) Developments in management thought. p. 88

Way , Idea , Parting

“The manner in which the subordinates do their work has incontestably a great effect upon the ultimate result, but the operation of management has much greater effect.”

Henri Fayol

Source: The administrative theory in the state, 1923, p. 102 cited in: Göran Svensson, Greg Wood, (2006) "Sustainable components of leadership effectiveness in organizational performance", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 25 Iss: 6, pp.522 - 534

“[In France] a minister has twenty assistants, where the Administrative Theory says that a manager at the head of a big undertaking should not have more than five or six.”

Henri Fayol

Henri Fayol cited in: Morgen Witzel (2001) Organization Behaviour, 1890-1940, Volume 1. p. 191

“Every employee in an undertaking — workman, foreman, shop manager, head of division, head of department, manager, and if it is a state enterprise the series extends to the minister or head of a state department — takes a larger or smaller share in the work of administration, and has, therefore, to use and display his administrative faculties. By administrative knowledge we mean planning, organization, command, coordination, and control: it can be elementary for the workman, but must be very wide in the case of employees of high rank, especially managers of big concerns. Everyone has some need of administrative knowledge.”

Henri Fayol

Source: Industrial and General Administration, 1916, p. 10; as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 4-5

Knowledge

“This code is indispensable. Be it a case of commerce, industry, politics, religion, war or philanthropy in every concern there is a management function to be performed and for its performance there must be principles, that is to say acknowledged truths regarded as proven on which to rely.”

Henri Fayol

Source: General and industrial management, 1919/1949, p. 42-43 cited in: John B. Miner (2006) Historical Origins, Theoretical Foundations, And the Future. p. 114

War , Truth , Religion