The modern management theory

Management is the control and organizing of an organization. It is a very dynamic discipline that always changes. People have been trying to develop methods to allay managers and many of those ideas and concepts come from the early management theories. Despite that though the role of the manager has changed a lot through the years and it is not the same as it was few decades ago. Thus, people argue about if those ideas and principles are still relevant now to post-capitalist management or the role of the managers today is too different.

One of the key figures in the Classical school of management theory was Henry Fayol with his “14 principles of management”. Reading them I can recognize ideas still evidence today and they can be used as a guideline for managers. In fact, I think many of them, revolutionary for organizational management at the time, are now considerate to be common sense. There has always been debates about the relevance of the old management theorists’ views.

The father of the modern management theory – Henry Fayol is a subject in a lot of them and gets a lot of criticism about his “14 principles of management” which are the following: division of work; authority; discipline; unity of command; unity of direction; subordination of individual interests to the general interests; remuneration; centralization; scalar chain; order; equity; stability of tenure of personnel; initiative; and esprit de corps. Due to the broad change in the economy, markets, and technology critics doubt that his principles have the same value as they did at the time he wrote them.

Even though he gets a lot of criticism from other theorists (Kotter, 1982; Mintzberg, 1973, 1989;Rolph and Bartram, 1992; Secretan, 1986) his theory remains the foundation of management practices. Fayol himself cautioned that “principles are flexible and capable of adaptation to every need” (Fayol, 1949, p. 19). Therefore, even changed with time most of them are still applicable in contemporary management. The first principle – division of labor (Fayol, 1949, p. 20) is a concept which requires of labor which enables people to perform work more efficiently.

The work is divided into small elements and assigned to workers with specialized skills (Rodrigues,2001). That way every worker becomes an expert in their area of production which is what leads to raising the efficiency as it saves time and money. This is the reason Victorian factories grew so much in nineteenth century. Many companies use the same approach and divide their employees in specialized teams. For example, Ford motor factories. In the 1920s, Henry Ford made use of the assembly line to increase the productivity of producing motor cars.

On the assembly line, there was division of labour with workers concentrating on jobs. Another one is Apple products. “Designed in California, produced in China. ” A new iPhone has innumerable examples of division of labour. The process is split up into many different parts. Design, hardware, software, manufacture, marketing, production, and assembly. (Economicshelp. org, 2018). Another principle that is still applicable is Discipline. That consists of having respect for the rules and regulations in an organization and application of punishments if the rules are being broken.

That is essential to every successful organization and it is a routine in a modern workplace just how it had been before. Every company is permeated by rules set to regulate the behavior of the personnel . For instance . there is rule in Japan that employees should not go forth the office until their chiefs have left (Bratton and Gold. 2003) . Subordination of Individual Interests to the General Interest means that the general interest must be more important than the this to one person or a group and everyone should work for the organization interest, not sabotaging it.

Of course, every person starts to work having their own goals and if they are similar to the company’s objectives that would be great but if a person is going opposite of the organization’s objectives then the second will collapse . The eighth principle of Fayol is Centralization. This one will always be present as Fayol says that organization must achieve balance between centralization and decentralization and no company can be completely centralized or the opposite.

If one of those happens either the employees will not have any authority or the managers so there must be balance between them. Governments are classic examples for top-down structures. The President or Prime Minister is the head, followed by Ministers who have a team below them. And at the bottom are the people who give their vote every couple of years. Microsoft is also a notable example for modern centralized organization. Scaler chain or vertical hierarchy is the ninth principle of the theorist.

This means the chain of command, it is the line of authority and communication in a company. From top to bottom authority. Fayol says there should be clean line, and everyone should know their position in the hierarchy. The clearer it is the more effective will be the company and it would also ease the decision making. Although recently some companies try having flatter structure most of them still use the hierarchical one and it has proven to be effective as it is used by “popular companies like Samsung and others.

In such companies, for customer service, if your complaint is not resolved in 3 days, it goes to the local manager, if not resolve in 5 days, it goes to regional head, and if not resolved in 7 days it goes to national heads. So, this is how a scalar chain looks like. It looks like the wireframe of a company, with complete architecture and hierarchy of the company shown in the wireframe. “(Marketing91. com, 2018) Order (Fayol, 1949, p. 36) refers to material order “a place for everything and everything in its place” and human order “a place for everyone and everyone in his place”.

There must be orderly placement of the resources such as Employees, Money, Resources, etc. Human and material resources must be in the right place at the right time. If they are not that will lead to misuse and disorder. This principle is relevant, and it is always going to be even if there are slight changes an organization always will need order to work efficiently. “Today’s organization still need to have their materials in the right place at the right time, a JIT system (Young, 1992), for example, and have their employees in jobs best suited for them.

This suggests that organizations require formalized information gathering systems – which this classical principle also suggests” (Carl A. Rodrigues, 2001). Espirit de corps is the last but definitely one of the most relevant principles of management. It might be defined as maintaining of high moral, pride, and loyalty between the members of the group or organization. Union between the employees and managers is strength and harmony. This leads to a successful company, proud of what it does and motivates the workers to achieve more and more.

Although it is relevant few companies can manage to achieve that, but it works for the efficiency of them. The principles of management based on Fayol’s practice and study are still relevant to post-capitalist ideas and evidence for that is in almost every organization. Recently employees have more authority and can contribute more to the company, and managers are adopting new styles. Despite that, slightly changed or adapted to today’s economy those principles stay the basis of today’s management and can be used as a guide for managers.