Henri Fayol

Henri Fayol Biography

Mines engineer and French administrator, Henri Fayol was one of the first researchers to analyze the nature of entrepreneurial activity, formulate a complete management theory and to define the main activities of a manager within the organizations: plan, organize, lead, coordinate and control.

Together with Frederick Taylor, one of the great pioneers of the Administration Classic Theory, which emphasizes the organizations’ structure. Made the connection between the strategy and entrepreneurial theory and highlighted the need to deepen management and cultivate leadership qualities. Fayol defended that the same principles could be applied in companies of different sizes and of all kind – industrial, commercial, governmental, political or even religious.

Defined the company as an organization that begins by a strategic plan or a definition of goals, progresses into a structure to put the plan in practice, performs in a controlled way between the leader and the workforce, harmonizes the departments’ work through the coordination, subjected to evaluation and control on its effectiveness. The best performance of the workforce will depend from the leader’s qualities, his business and employees knowledge, and his capacity to inspire a sense of mission.

Taylor also defined 14 general principles about management, which were since then developed in different ways by the most recent gurus:

1. Work division (specialization);
2. Authority and responsibility;
3. Discipline;
4. Command unit;
5. Direction unit (only one plan for each group of activities, with the same goal);
6. Subordination of the individual interests to those of the organization;
7. Employees salary (fair and assured);
8. Centralization (of the superior level authority);
9. School chain (considering the authority line from the higher levels);
10. Order (for each thing and place);
11. Fairness (kindness and justice to conquer loyalty);
12. Personnel stability (since rotation is harmful);
13. Initiative (personally assure that the plan will be performed);
14. Team spirit.