Henri Fayol

Henri Fayol (29 July 1841 – 19 November 1925) was a French mining engineer, mining executive, author and director of mines who developed a general theory of business administration that is often called Fayolism. He and his colleagues developed this theory independently of scientific management but roughly contemporaneously. Like his contemporary Frederick Winslow Taylor, he is widely acknowledged as a founder of modern management methods.
Biography.
Fayol was born in 1841 in a suburb of Constantinople (now Istanbul). His father (an engineer) was in the military at the time and was appointed superintendent of works to build Galata Bridge, which bridged the Golden Horn. The family returned to France in 1847, where Fayol graduated from the mining academy "École Nationale Supérieure des Mines" in Saint-Étienne in 1860.
That same year, aged 19, Fayol started working at the mining company named "Compagnie de Commentry-Fourchambault-Decazeville" in Commentry, in the Auvergne region. He was hired by Stéphane Mony, who had decided to hire the best engineers from the Saint-Étienne Mining School, and Fayol joined the firm as an engineer and trainee manager. Mony made Fayol his protégé, and Fayol succeeded him as manager of the Commentry mine and eventually as managing director of Commentry-Fourchambault and Decazeville.
During his time at the mine, he studied the causes of underground fires, how to prevent them, how to fight them, how to reclaim mining areas that had been burned, and developed a knowledge of the structure of the basin. In 1888 he was promoted to managing director. During his time as director, he made changes to improve the working situations in the mines, such as allowing employees to work in teams, and changing the division of labor. Later, more mines were added to his duties.
In 1900 Fayol became a member of the Comité Central des Houillères de France, member of the board of the Comité des forges and administrator of the Société de Commentry, Fourchambault et Decazeville. Eventually, the board decided to abandon its iron and steel business and the coal mines. They chose Henri Fayol to oversee this as the new managing director. Upon receiving the position, Fayol presented the board with a plan to restore the firm. The board accepted the proposal. At that time, the company was at the verge of bankruptcy. With rich and broad administrative experience, Fayol contributed a lot in turning the fortune of the company. When he retired in 1918, the company was financially strong and one of the largest industrial combines in Europe.
Based largely on his own management experience, he developed his concept of administration. In 1916 he promoted his ideas in "Administration Industrielle et Générale", at about the same time as Frederick Winslow Taylor published his "Principles of Scientific Management". After his retirement he became the Director of the Centre of Administrative Studies in Paris.
Work.
Fayol's work became more generally known with the 1949 publication of "General and industrial administration", the English translation of the 1916 work "Administration industrielle et générale". In this work Fayol presented his theory of management, known as Fayolism. Before that Fayol had written several articles on mining engineering, starting in the 1870s, and some preliminary papers on administration.
Mining engineering.
Starting in the 1870s, Fayol wrote a series of articles on mining subjects, such as on the spontaneous heating of coal (1879), the formation of coal beds (1887), the sedimentation of the Commentry, and on plant fossils (1890).
His first articles were published in the French "Bulletin de la Société de l'Industrie minérale", and beginning in the early 1880s in the Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences, the proceedings of the French Academy of Sciences.
Fayolism.
Fayol's work was one of the first comprehensive statements of a general theory of management. He proposed that there were six types of organisational activity, including management as one of these, five primary functions of management and fourteen principles of management.
Types of organisational activity.
Fayol divided the range of activities undertaken within an industrial undertaking into six types:
Functions of management.
In his original work, "Administration industrielle et générale; prévoyance, organisation, directing, coordination, controle", five primary functions were identified:
The control function, from the French "contrôler", is used in the sense that a manager must receive feedback about a process in order to make necessary adjustments and must analyze the deviations. Lately scholars of management combined the directing and coordinating function into one leading function.
Principles of management.
Some Fayolian principles still influence some contemporary management theories to a certain degree.