Fayol's 14 Principles: Structuring Work and Supporting Staff

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Fayol's 14 Principles: Structuring Work and Supporting Staff

Principles of Management · Chapter 3: The Classical Era of Management ThoughtSection 3.5 · lesson 11 of 11712 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

A general theory of administration, written from the top.

  • Group the 14 principles by what they govern
  • Explain the tensions between principles
  • Weigh the fair criticism, and why the framework endures
  • Diagnose an organizational problem with the principles

Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,621 words). Read along, or search it.

The Classical Era of Management Thought

Fayol's 14 Principles: Structuring Work and Supporting Staff

Taylor looked at organizations from the shop floor, one task at a time. Henri Fayol looked from the opposite end, the executive's office at the top. From there he set out fourteen principles for running an organization as a whole. In this section we sort those principles into three working groups, by what they govern. We look at the tensions between them, which Fayol never claimed to resolve. We weigh a fair criticism, and see why the framework survives it. And then we use the principles as they are most useful today, to diagnose a real structural problem.

A View From the Top

Fayol's Vantage Point

Subchapter two point one introduced Henri Fayol as the source of the four management functions. It handed his fourteen specific principles forward to this section. What set Fayol apart among the classical theorists was where he wrote from. He was a French mining engineer, who spent much of his career as an executive. So he built his theory from the top of the organization. He addressed the general problem of administration, as a whole. Contrast that with Taylor, whose vantage point was the individual task, and the worker on the shop floor. It is tempting to treat the two as rivals. They are better understood as complementary. Taylor asked how a specific job should be performed and measured. Fayol asked how an entire organization should be structured and run.

3 Working Groups

14 Principles, Organized by What They Govern

Fourteen items is a lot to hold in mind as a flat list. It is far easier to organize them into three working groups, by what they govern. Seven principles govern structure and authority, meaning how work and authority are arranged. Division of work, authority and responsibility, unity of command, and unity of direction. Then centralization, the scalar chain, and order. Two principles govern process and coordination. They are discipline, and the subordination of individual interest to the general interest. And five principles govern the treatment of people. Remuneration, equity, stability of tenure, initiative, and esprit de corps. Let's take each group in turn, and notice the modern practice that descends from each principle.

Structural Principles, Part 1

Arranging Work and Authority

Start with structure. Division of work holds that specialization, by task or by subject, increases skill and output. Its modern descendant is job specialization, and role design. Authority and responsibility must be matched. Authority without responsibility invites abuse. Responsibility without authority is unworkable, as Subchapter one point one showed. Today that appears as delegation with matched accountability. Unity of command says each employee should receive orders from one superior only. That gives us single-manager reporting lines. It is also the source of the tension in matrix structures. Unity of direction says activities with the same objective need one plan, and one head. In modern terms, a single strategic plan per initiative, rather than competing parallel plans.

Structural Principles, Part 2

Where Decisions Sit and How They Travel

The rest of the structural group concerns where decisions sit, and how they travel. Fayol treated centralization as a matter of degree, not an absolute. The right balance between decisions at the top and decisions pushed downward depends on the situation. That becomes the centralization and decentralization design question in Chapter seven. The scalar chain is the formal line of authority, running from top to bottom. But Fayol added an exception, called the gangplank. It permits direct lateral communication between peers, when speed requires it. Modern cross-functional communication norms descend from that idea. Order means a place for everything and everyone, and everything and everyone in its place. Today, that is organized workflows and clearly defined roles. One warning. Students often confuse the two unities. Unity of command is about who gives you orders. Unity of direction is about how many plans serve one objective.

Process Principles

Individual and Organizational Interest

The process group has only two principles, but both carry a twist. Discipline sounds one-sided. Fayol saw it as a reciprocal obligation. Workers owe adherence to agreed rules. But that depends on the quality of the leadership that sets the rules, and enforces them. The modern version is a code of conduct, paired with consistent, fair enforcement. The second principle is the subordination of individual interest to the general interest. The organization's interest should prevail over that of any single individual. Today that is qualified. We recognize that a workforce which stays motivated over time also serves the general interest. So the modern practice is a balance, between individual incentives and organizational goals.

People Principles

How the Workforce Is Treated

The third group governs how the workforce is treated. Remuneration means pay should be fair to both the employee and the organization. That descends into compensation philosophy, and pay equity reviews. Equity, as Fayol defined it, is kindliness combined with justice in dealing with employees. Today, consistent and humane application of policy. Stability of tenure of personnel is subtler than it sounds. Excessive turnover is both a cause and an effect of poor management, and it carries a real cost. That is the root of modern retention strategy, and cost-of-turnover analysis. Initiative means letting subordinates originate and carry out plans, within limits. Fayol accepted this even at the cost of some managerial pride. That is delegated ownership of projects. And esprit de corps holds that union and harmony among personnel is a genuine organizational strength. It lives on in team cohesion, and culture-building.

Unresolved Tensions

Principles That Pull Against Each Other

Fayol did not claim his principles were free of internal tension, and no one has resolved it since. Three tensions stand out. First, specialization pulls against coordination. The more finely work is divided into specialized pieces, the more effort it takes to reassemble them into a whole. Second, unity of command pulls against the modern matrix structure. In a matrix, an employee genuinely reports to two managers at once. Chapter seven covers that form. Third, centralization pulls against responsiveness. Concentrating decisions at the top improves consistency, but slows the response to fast-moving local conditions. Pushing decisions downward speeds response, but risks inconsistency across the organization. These are not failures of the framework. They are honest statements of trade-offs, which real organizations navigate, often differently in different parts at the same time.

Criticism and Endurance

Untested, Yet Still Useful

There is also a serious and fair criticism to face. It holds that the principles work as unfalsifiable prescriptions, rather than tested propositions. They came from Fayol's own executive experience, and were offered as sound administrative judgment. They were not developed through controlled study, or shown to hold across varied conditions. And a principle stated broadly enough to allow exceptions whenever it fails is very hard to test, or disprove. That does not make the principles worthless. It means we should treat them as an organized vocabulary of considerations that experienced administrators find useful. They are not settled findings with the standing of a controlled experiment. And that vocabulary is exactly why the framework endures, a century after it was proposed. Calling something a unity of command violation names a specific, shared problem. Saying the reporting structure feels confusing does not.

Figure 3.5.1

2 Problems on 1 Org Chart

Here is that diagnostic vocabulary at work, on an organization chart for a fictional manufacturer. At the top sits a vice president of operations. Below are a production manager and a quality manager. The production manager runs the line staff, Team A. Under the quality manager sits a project lead, responsible for a line upgrade. The upgrade has to be carried out by Team A. Two problems are marked at once. The first is an authority-responsibility mismatch. The project lead is held responsible for the upgrade, with no formal authority over the staff who must do it. The second is a unity of command violation, the dashed line. Team A takes direction from its production manager and from the project lead, at the same time. These are two distinct diagnoses, not one problem described twice. And the next slide shows why that matters.

Applying the Principles

Naming the Fix, Not Choosing It

So how would you fix this chart? The mismatch has two possible fixes. One is to give the project lead genuine authority. Specifically, authority over the portion of Team A's time spent on the upgrade. That matches her authority to the responsibility she already carries. The other is to relieve her of responsibility for outcomes she cannot control. That responsibility then goes to whichever manager does hold the authority. The unity of command violation has its own fix. Route the project lead's requests for Team A's time through the production manager, rather than straight to the staff. That keeps a single line of command, while the project's priorities are still represented. Now notice the trap. If you grant the project lead authority by simply adding her as a second boss, you fix one problem by creating the other. Fayol's principles cannot tell you which option to choose. That depends on circumstances. What they do is name precisely what is wrong, and the shape of the available fixes.

Case Vignette

Responsible for the Deliverable, Not the Team

Here is the same situation from the inside, in a composite case constructed for instruction. Owen was named project lead for a line upgrade, and told plainly he was responsible for finishing it on time. The production staff who would do the physical work still reported to their existing production manager. That manager kept full authority over their daily schedule and priorities. Then the upgrade began to slip. Staff were being pulled onto urgent daily-output problems that their own manager considered more pressing. Owen could ask. He could explain the upgrade's importance, and escalate to senior leadership. What he could not do was direct Team A's time, the way a manager with real authority could. That is a textbook authority-responsibility mismatch. Once Owen saw it for what it was, his options were exactly the two we described. Seek formal authority over a defined slice of Team A's time. Or ask to share responsibility for the deadline with the manager who actually held the authority. Next, Subchapter three point six returns to the individual task, through Frank and Lillian Gilbreth's motion study.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Fayol's 14 Principles: Structuring Work and Supporting Staff

What are Fayol's 14 principles of management?
Henri Fayol's 14 principles are division of work, authority and responsibility, discipline, unity of command, unity of direction, subordination of individual interest to the general interest, remuneration, centralization, scalar chain, order, equity, stability of tenure of personnel, initiative, and esprit de corps. They are easier to remember grouped by what they govern: structure and authority, process and coordination, and the treatment of people.
What is the difference between unity of command and unity of direction?
Unity of command means each employee should receive orders from one superior only, so it concerns who gives you orders. Unity of direction means activities serving the same objective should have one plan and one head, so it concerns how many plans serve one objective. The two are often confused, and a matrix structure, where an employee reports to two managers, is the classic strain on unity of command.
What is Fayol's gangplank principle?
Fayol's gangplank is an exception to the scalar chain, the formal line of authority running from the top of an organization to the bottom. It permits peers in different parts of the chain to communicate directly with each other when speed requires it, instead of routing every message up and back down through their superiors. Modern cross-functional communication norms descend from this idea.
What is the main criticism of Fayol's principles of management?
The main criticism is that the principles work as unfalsifiable prescriptions rather than tested propositions. They came from Fayol's own executive experience, not controlled study, and a principle broad enough to allow exceptions whenever it fails is hard to disprove. They still endure as a shared diagnostic vocabulary, because calling something a unity of command violation names a specific problem in a way that a vague complaint cannot.

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