Principles and Roles of Effective Management, Explained

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Principles and Roles of Effective Management

Foundations of Leadership · Chapter 5: Intersection ModuleSection 5.4 · lesson 20 of 9010 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

Fayol's prescriptive grammar and Mintzberg's descriptive map.

  • Summarise Fayol's fourteen principles and their logic
  • Describe Mintzberg's ten roles and three categories
  • Compare the prescriptive and descriptive approaches
  • Apply either to diagnose a managerial failure

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Transcript

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Intersection Module

Principles and Roles of Effective Management

Effective management is more than the disciplined performance of the four classical functions. It also rests on principles. Durable rules of thumb that guide a manager's judgement in the absence of perfect information. And on roles. The recurring behavioural patterns that managers actually perform when someone observes them at work. This section examines the two most influential treatments of those themes. Henri Fayol's fourteen principles, and Henry Mintzberg's ten managerial roles. One prescriptive. One descriptive. And genuinely complementary.

Two Lenses

What Managers Should Do, and What They Actually Do

The two frameworks approach the same subject from opposite directions. Henri Fayol's nineteen sixteen work distilled forty years of senior management experience at a French mining company. Into fourteen principles, intended as flexible guidelines rather than rigid laws. That is a normative grammar. It says what managers should attend to. Henry Mintzberg's nineteen seventy-three study took the opposite approach entirely. He observed senior managers minute by minute, and distilled what they actually did into ten distinct roles. That is descriptive. It says what the job actually looks like. And the two are best read as complements, rather than as rivals.

Fayol I

Structure of Work and Authority

Fayol's fourteen principles fall loosely into three clusters. The first addresses the structure of work and authority. Division of work. Specialisation improves output. Authority and responsibility. The right to command must be matched by accountability. Unity of command. Each subordinate reports to one supervisor. Unity of direction. One head, and one plan, for activities with a common goal. And centralisation. Where the appropriate degree depends on context. Notice that last one is framed as a variable, rather than as a value. Fayol did not say centralise, or decentralise. This first cluster is still load-bearing today. Every modern discussion of reporting lines, or matrix structures, begins implicitly with these principles.

Fayol II

The Treatment of People

The second cluster addresses the treatment of people. Discipline. Agreements must be respected. And note that runs in both directions. Remuneration. Fair payment for fair work. Equity. Kindliness and justice in dealing with employees. Stability of tenure. Turnover is costly, and disruptive. Initiative. Employees should be free to propose and execute plans. And esprit de corps. Unity is a great strength. Here is what is genuinely remarkable about that list. Virtually every modern human-resource policy on grievances, fair pay, or promotion can be traced back to it. And it was written in nineteen sixteen.

Fayol III

The Organisation as a Whole

The third cluster addresses the organisation as a whole. Subordination of individual interest. The interest of the unit overrides that of any individual. Scalar chain. The line of authority running from top to bottom. And order. A place for everything, and everything in its place. Now, Fayol was emphatic about something that often gets lost when these are taught. The principles were guides. They were not commandments. The appropriate degree of centralisation in a small shop differs from that in a multinational. The discipline appropriate in a military unit differs from that in a research laboratory. A principle applied without judgement stops being a principle.

Why It Aged Well

Principles vs. Procedures

There is a common error worth heading off here. Confusing Fayol's principles with the rigid procedures of early scientific management. Frederick Taylor sought to specify the one best way to do each task. Stopwatch studies. Specified motions. Fayol sought to specify the principles by which managers should adapt to circumstances. And that distinction matters, because principles age better than procedures. Taylor's stopwatch studies have been overtaken by every wave of operations research since. Fayol's principle that authority must be matched by responsibility remains intact a century on. Because it captures a structural relationship. Rather than a particular technique.

Mintzberg

What the Observation Actually Found

Where Fayol was prescriptive, Mintzberg was descriptive. His nineteen seventy-three study tracked senior executives through their working days. And it concluded something uncomfortable for the textbooks of the time. The image of the manager as a calm, reflective planner bore little resemblance to reality. Real managers worked at an unrelenting pace. In short bursts. On widely varied issues. And mostly through verbal interaction. Now, that finding was not a criticism of managers. It was a criticism of the theory. Which had been describing a job that nobody actually had.

The Model

Ten Roles, Three Categories

From those observations, Mintzberg distilled ten recurring roles, in three categories. The interpersonal roles flow from the manager's formal position, and concern relationships with people. Figurehead. Performing ceremonial and symbolic duties on behalf of the unit. Leader. Hiring, motivating, developing and integrating subordinates. And liaison. Maintaining relationships with peers, and with external contacts. The informational roles concern the manager's position as a node in the flow of information. Monitor. Scanning the environment for information relevant to the unit. Disseminator. Transmitting information from outside the unit to inside it. And spokesperson. Speaking for the unit to outsiders, including to senior leadership. And the decisional roles concern the manager's authority to commit the unit to courses of action. Entrepreneur. Initiating projects to improve or change the unit. Disturbance handler. Responding to unexpected pressures and crises. Resource allocator. Deciding how time, money and people are distributed. And negotiator. Representing the unit in significant negotiations.

Comparison

Each Corrects the Other's Blind Spot

Fayol and Mintzberg are sometimes presented as rivals. They are better read as complements. And you can see why by considering what each one alone leaves out. A student of management who knows Fayol but not Mintzberg risks imagining the work as far more orderly than it is. A student who knows Mintzberg but not Fayol risks confusing busy-ness with effectiveness. The two frameworks also speak to different audiences. Fayol's principles are most useful for designing organisations, writing policies, and resolving disputes about structure. Mintzberg's roles are most useful for individual managers reflecting on their own practice. Recognising, for instance, that they have been over-investing in the monitor role, while neglecting the entrepreneur role. Or that disturbance handling has quietly crowded out the longer time horizons of resource allocation.

Case

The Department Head Who Did Everything

Here is a case where both frameworks are needed to see the whole problem. Consider a research department head who is meticulous about Mintzberg's monitor and disseminator roles. Reading every paper. Summarising every conference. Circulating regular updates. The department is well-informed, and intellectually alert. Yet over time, hiring slows. Promotion cases languish. External grants are missed. A retrospective using Mintzberg's framework reveals the pattern immediately. The head has been performing the informational roles enthusiastically, while neglecting the leader and resource-allocator roles. A retrospective using Fayol adds depth to that. The principles of initiative, and of stability of tenure, have been quietly violated. The combined diagnosis is more useful than either one alone. Mintzberg names what the head was doing. Fayol names what the organisation needed.

Extensions

How Both Have Been Updated

Both frameworks have been extended in recent decades. Mintzberg himself revised his model in Managing, in two thousand and nine. Proposing that managerial work operates on three planes. Information, people, and action. Each with its own sub-roles. Other scholars have added roles that the original lists understate. The manager as sense-maker, helping the team interpret ambiguous events. The manager as connector, building bridges across functions. And the manager as coach, developing subordinates through structured questioning rather than instruction. Fayol's principles have likewise been supplemented with newer concerns. Psychological safety. Inclusion. Sustainability. Concerns his early-twentieth-century context simply did not foreground.

Application

Using the Roles as a Personal Audit

The most accessible way to use Mintzberg's framework is as a personal audit. Over a two-week period, classify each significant interaction into one of the ten roles. And the resulting distribution frequently surprises people. Managers who pride themselves on being strategic often find that most of their time goes to disturbance handling. While managers who feel overwhelmed by reactive work sometimes find they have under-invested in the very roles that would reduce it. That is the practical value of a descriptive framework. It does not tell you what you ought to do. It tells you what you have actually been doing. Which is usually the harder thing to see.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Principles and Roles of Effective Management

What are Fayol's 14 principles of management?
Henri Fayol's 14 principles, published in 1916, are flexible guidelines for managers: division of work, authority and responsibility, discipline, unity of command, unity of direction, subordination of individual interest, remuneration, centralization, scalar chain, order, equity, stability of tenure, initiative and esprit de corps. They cover the structure of authority, the treatment of people and the organization as a whole. Fayol stressed that they were guides requiring judgment, not rigid laws.
What are Mintzberg's ten managerial roles?
Henry Mintzberg's ten managerial roles, from his 1973 study of executives at work, fall into three groups. The interpersonal roles are figurehead, leader and liaison. The informational roles are monitor, disseminator and spokesperson. The decisional roles are entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator and negotiator. Mintzberg found that real managers work at an unrelenting pace, in short bursts, on varied issues and mostly through conversation, rather than as calm, reflective planners.
How do Fayol's principles differ from Mintzberg's roles?
Fayol's principles are prescriptive, describing what managers should attend to, while Mintzberg's roles are descriptive, recording what managers actually do. Fayol drew on decades of senior experience at a French mining company; Mintzberg observed executives minute by minute. The two complement each other. Fayol's principles help with designing organizations and settling disputes about structure, while Mintzberg's roles help individual managers reflect on their own practice and spot neglected roles.
How can a manager use Mintzberg's roles to assess their own work?
A manager can run a personal audit by classifying each significant interaction over about two weeks into one of Mintzberg's ten roles. The resulting distribution often surprises people. Managers who see themselves as strategic may find most of their time goes to disturbance handling, while those overwhelmed by reactive work may discover they have under-invested in roles such as entrepreneur or resource allocator that would reduce it.

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