Administrative Management
(Classical School of Management)
Administrative management
basically focuses on how a business should
be organized and the practices an effective manager should follow.
While pioneers of
scientific management tried to
determinethe best way to perform a job, those in the administrative
management explored the possibilities of an ideal way (rule of thumb) to
put all jobs together and operate an organization. Thus the main focus
of administrative school or general management theory is on finding "the
best way " to run organizations. Admnistrative management school is also
called "traditional principles of management.
Henry Fayol, a French
industrialist, is the chief architect and the father of the
administrative management theory. Other prominent exponenets nclude
Chester I. Barnard,
amid Colnel Lyndal
Urwick.
Some people think Max Weber had
influenced this school as well. According to them the
two major contributors to administrative management school of thought
were Henri Fayol
(1930) and Max Weber
(1922). Henri Fayol's
14
principles of management are still relevant, while
Max Weber's
bureaucracy model still has
some relevance in medium and large organizations. Weber's bureaucratic
management theory is often presented alongside the work of
administrative management researchers such as
Henry Fayol,
Luther Gulick and
Lyndall Urwick.
The administrative theory "emphasized
management functions and attempted to generate broad administrative
principles that would serve as guidelines for the rationalization of
organizational activities" (Scott p. 36).
Henry Fayol
played a main role in the turn-of-the-century Classical School of
management theory. Fayol
believed that techniques of effective management could be defined and
taught and that managerial organization hold as much importance as
management as workers organization. He was the first to identify
functions of management.
According to Fayol
the five functions of managers
were:
- Plan
- Organize
- Command
- Coordinate
- Control.
Functions of Managers (According to
Henry Fayol)
Planning
is the act of anticipating the future and acting on it. "Planning
reduces uncertainty by forcing managers to look ahead, anticipate
change, consider the impact of change and develop appropriate
responses." (Robbins, 2000, p.247) Organization is the development of
the institution's resources, including material and human. Commanding is
keeping the institution's actions and processes running. Co-ordination
is the alignment and harmonization of the groups' efforts. Finally,
control means that the above activities are performed according to the
appropriate rules and procedures.
Fayol's work included a definition of a
body of principles, which enabled a manager to construct a formal
structure of the organization and to supervise it in a rational way. He
focused his research and work on a more managerial level.
Fayol developed
fourteen principles of management.
Fayol emphasized the
role of administrative management and concluded that all activities
that occur in business organizations could be divided into six main
groups.
- Technical (production,
manufacturing);
- Commercial (buying, selling,
exchange);
- Financial (obtaining and using
capital);
- Security (protection of
property and persons);
- Accounting (balance sheet,
stocktaking, statistics, costing);
- Managerial (planning,
organizing, commanding, coordinating, controlling).
Fayol concluded that
the six groups of activities are interdependent and that it is the
role of management to ensure all six activities work smoothly to
achieve the goals of an enterprise.
Main contributors of Administrative Management School
References
http://www.oppapers.com/essays/Administrative-Management-Theory/62799
http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/fayol.htm
http://bizcovering.com/management/fayol-theory-of-administrative-management/
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