Henri Fayol Quotes (1841-1925)

“There is no one doctrine of administration for business and another for affairs of state; administrative doctrine is universal. Principles and general rules which hold good for business hold good for the state too, and the reverse applies.”

“Are there principles of administration? Nobody doubts it. What do they consist of? That is what I propose to discuss today. The subjects of recruitment, organization and direction of personnel will form the subject of the second part of this study.”

“[In France] a minister has twenty assistants, where the Administrative Theory says that a manager at the head of a big undertaking should not have more than five or six.”

“The technical and commercial functions of a business are clearly defined, but the same cannot be said of the administrative function. Not many people are familiar with its constitution and powers; our senses cannot follow its workings - we do not see it build or forge, sell or buy - and yet we all know that, if it does not work properly, the undertaking is in danger of failure.”

“Accounting reveals the state of the business. It is a kind of thermometer of its condition and its health. One must consult it continually. Every employee in the enterprise, from the lowest up to the Director, must know the results for that part of the service for which he is responsible.”

“This has been the cause of a great deal of wasted time and effort, and industry, which needs young men who are healthy, tractable, unpretentious and, I would even say, full of illusions, often receives engineers who are tired out, weak in body, and less ready than one could wish to take modest jobs and work so hard that everything seems easy to them.”

“To manage is to forecast and plan, to organize, to command, to coordinate and to control. To foresee and plan means examining the future and drawing up the plan of action. To organize means building up the dual structure, material and human, of the undertaking. To command means binding together, unifying and harmonizing all activity and effort. To control means seeing that everything occurs in conformity with established rule and expressed demand.”

“Industry, which needs young men who are healthy, tractable, unpretentious and, I would even say, full of illusions, often receives engineers who are tired out, weak in body, and less ready than one could wish to take modest jobs and work so hard that everything seems easy to them. I am convinced that they could begin practical work much earlier and just as well prepared, by leaving things which are not used in practice out of their school education.”

“One could define the administrative department by saying that it includes everything that is not part of the other departments, but one can define it in a more positive manner by saying that it is specifically responsible for; 1. ensuring that unity of action, discipline, anticipation, activity, order, etc., exist in all parts of the enterprise; 2. recruiting, organizing and directing the workforce; 3. ensuring good relations between the various departments and with the outside world; 4. coordination of all efforts towards the overall goal; 5. satisfying shareholders and employees; labor and management.”

“Every employee in an undertaking, then, takes a larger or smaller share in the work of administration, and has, therefore, to use and display his administrative faculties. This is why we often see men, who are specially gifted, gradually rise from the lowest to the highest level of the industrial hierarchy, although they have only had an elementary education. But young men, who begin practical work as engineers soon after leaving industrial schools, are in a particularly good position both for learning administration and for showing their ability in this direction, for in administration, as in all other branches of industrial activity, a man’s work is judged by its results.”

“The administrative function has many duties. It has to foresee and make preparations to meet the financial, commercial, and technical conditions under which the concern must be started and run. It deals with the organization, selection, and management of the staff. It is the means by which the various parts of the undertaking communicate with the outside world, etc. Although this list is incomplete, it gives us an idea of the importance of the administrative function. The sole fact that it is in charge of the staff makes it in most cases the predominant function, for we all know that, even if a firm has perfect machinery and manufacturing processes, it is doomed to failure if it is run by an inefficient staff.”

“There is only a small number of principles and even these flow from a single, fundamental principle; ``Unity of Command.’’ In practice, the principal is as follows:  Every action must be ordered by one person only or equally ``For any act the person who carries it out should receive orders from only one boss.’’ Why should this be so? Why do all associations, all groups of men need one boss and one boss only? One could explain it as follows: it arises because of the near impossibility that two people have exactly the same feeling, the same point of view, the same conception of execution on any subject whatsoever: or equally, through a sense of justice which makes us desire that each person has responsibility for his actions and for his actions alone. And there are other considerations as well, but I will limit myself with the statement ``No one can serve two masters at the same time’’ says the proverb. And a popular saying adds, `Two people cannot both run the show.’’”

“One motive for Henri Fayol's vigorous defense of administration as a subject for serious scientific study was the fact that he saw France, in the period between the Franco-Prussian War and World War I, disintegrating for lack of administrative ability and managerial efficiency. Hoping to make sounder administrative practices available to French civil and military agencies, he fostered the "Center of Studies in Administration" in Paris, as a kind of French Public Administration Clearing House. Fayol was one of the principal consultants to the French government during the crisis period of World War I and a leading participant in the International Congress of Administrative Sciences. Despite his conservative views about French politics, he was in complete agreement on questions of governmental organization with the rising French socialist of those days, Leon Blum, who, as Prime Minister, was later to try out some of the administrative ideas they both held in common. This is... but one of several such instances of agreement on administrative matters among political opposites, an instance which helps to establish the view Fayol insisted upon, namely, that administration is a subject of universal importance.”

“The contribution of Henri Fayol is well known to even the beginning student of management. Most principles of management textbooks acknowledge Fayol as the father of the first theory of administration ans his 14 principles as providing a framework for the process of thought.”

“Henri Fayol (1949) is generally considered as the father of planning. As early as 1917, he led a nationally owned French mining concern from the brink of bankruptcy to international dominance. This was clearly the result of his development of a specific system. This system involved forecasts from various levels and persons within the organization. Managers from each level submitted their best estimates of the coming years activity and, based on this information, the Chief Executive Officer would make up a one to five year plan. Financial evaluations and control of departments were then based upon these projections. Based on the business practices and policies of 1917, this was a radical and unsettling approach. Prior to Fayol’s innovation, the charisma and entrepreneurial abilities of the firm’s leadership was believed to be the major factor leading to its success. As more firms became corporations and the size of business entities continued to grow, Fayol’s planning approach became widely accepted. General Motors adopted this approach (during the 1930s and 1940s and provided an excellent example of this (Sloane, 1963) in the United States.”

“He wrote a monograph in French in 1916, entitled "General and Industrial Administration". Until this book was translated into English in 1929, little was known about him by the western world”