Organisational Management

Adam Finch                                                                                                                                  1/7  080786661 

BUS1001 Introduction to Management & Organisations

Essay 1

Adam Finch

Adam Finch                                                                                                                                  2/7  080786661  According to Pettinger (2002), management can variously be defined as a ‘science, profession and art’ and ‘its status lies somewhere between the three’ with ‘strong elements of each’.
Before you can properly argue for or against Pettinger’s definitions, you have to go back further and try and find a base definition of management. The first port-of-call for anyone would always be Henri Fayol, who laid the foundations of management with his theory of management. Fayol’s theory was an indication of how he felt managers should be doing their job, through: planning, coordination, organisation, controlling and commanding the workforce (Brooks, 2006). At the point of Fayol publishing this, which was written in French in 1916 (Mintzberg, 1975) and translated to English in 1949, the above maxims were considered the way that the modern day manager of the time should be carrying out their daily workload. Despite Fayol’s theory speaking volumes to many that read it, when you read further into Fayol’s theory you find that Fayol treated the manager’s subordinates in a very impersonal manner. Fayol assumed that the workforce would do as they were told, when they were told; and the theory itself is just too idealistic, it would be unfair to say that because of these two flaws the theory itself is moot. The theory still has its strengths, for example the theory still influences the train of thought of today’s world, even after all this time and Fayol was also an academic and was able to build upon his own experiences when writing his theory and therefore can be given credibility due to his... [continues]

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