Henri Mintzberg considers the image of management which was developed from the work of Henry Fayol as one of folklore rather than fact. However, it could be argued that the image portrayed by Fayol is superior to that of Mintzberg, and the latter’s description is of rather ineffective management! Who do think is right?

Over 50 years ago, English-speaking managers were directly introduced to Henry Fayol’s theory in management. His treatise, General and Industrial Management (1949), has had a great effect on managers and the practice of management around the world. However, 24 years after the English translation of Fayol, Henri Mintzberg in the Nature of Managerial Work (1973) developed another theory and stated that Fayol’s work was just “folklores”. This essay is to prove that work of Fayol and Mintzberg both have validity and they can be reconciled to some extent. It also claims that Fayol’s theory has been proved to be more useful in the practice of management and can not be called “folklores” as stated by Mintzberg.

In the book General and Industrial Management (1949), Fayol described management as a function and to manage was to plan, organise, coordinate, command, and control. To plan was to forecast what might happen in the future and determine a chain of actions to be taken by the whole organisation. To organise was to build up a dual structure of the undertakings, allocate the materials and human and lay out the lines of authorities and responsibility. To command was to put the plan into action, set the work in operation. And to control was to make sure everything occur in conformity by means of established rules and command. In his work, Fayol refused the definition of management as a privilege or a particular responsibility of the head of an organisation but assumed it was an activity spread across all members of the body corporate. Managerial