The existence of intelligently structured actions carried out by people who are responsible for planning, organizing, leading

and controlling various activities is witnessed for thousands of years. This process was later identified as management. For today, six major management theories have been developed: scientific management, general administrative theory, quantitative approach, organizational behavior theory, systems and contingency approaches. It is important to mention that each approach resulted from the improvement and adjustment of the ideas and knowledge of former theorists and does not completely contradict each other. This paper discusses the views of one of the major followers of general administrative management theory and the greatest of the European pioneers of management (Urwick, 1949), Henry Fayol. In the early part of the twentieth century Fayol (1949:3) identified six groups of activities or essential functions to which all industrial undertakings give rise technical, commercial, financial, security, accounting, and managerial activities. His primary concern is with the last of these, the managerial activities. Therefore after conducting a number of studies, he proposed that all the managers tend to complete a set of activities which he categorized in five key managerial functions: planning, organizing, commanding, co-ordinating and controlling. The majorities of management textbooks are structured based on Fayols management functions and use them as a framework. Nevertheless, there are number of authors who believed that those functions cannot be related to the way the managers work in the new era of management. Henry Fayols ideas about managerial work have been dismissed as folklore (Mintzberg, 1973/1980), which does not correspond to up to date relevance. However, more recently, it has been argued that Fayols management functions still represent the most useful way of conceptualizing the managers job (Carroll and Gillen, 1987:38). This work draws attention to the contribution Fayols statements make in todays management theory and practice by proving the relevance or irrelevance of particular elements of management functions proposed by Fayol.

Planning Planning seeks identification of goals to meet future expectations of an organization. Hence consider the work to be done or undertaken as well as assets exploited in order to achieve those goals. Planning is relevant and actual today for the organization to see the elements of the picture which predicts where the company is going to stand in the long run from now. Following attitudes of planning helps to build some of the aspects of organizational culture. This requires the process of disseminating the characteristics of a plan within the organization in order to navigate employees to established target. For instance at Time Warner Inc. the marketing chiefs of various company divisions meet together every three weeks to discuss the future plans and how the hand in hand work can make them more effective. It is important for managers and employees to build interdependent synergy that involves planning for achieving the organizational aims.

Organizing Organizing is responsible for identifying and grouping the tasks to be done by the employees and distributing resources within the respective departments of the organization for the effective implementation of the plan. According to Fayol, the key objectives of organizing involve ensuring proper plan preparation and execution, aligning objectives with resources, establishing a single guiding authority, harmonizing and co-ordinating of activities, maximizing personnel deployment, clear delineation of duties, encouraging initiatives and responsibility, maintaining discipline, ensuring the subordination of individual interests to corporate interests and supervision of both material and human order. All of the mentioned above is relevant to the way management is organized nowadays, except for maintaining full control, which contradicts to the term encouraging initiatives and responsibility. Maintaining full control might be perceived by managers as commanding over their employees and limiting them from innovating ideas and decisionmaking, rather than motivating and rewarding them for fresh opinions. It is important for the company that demands development of new ideas to restructure this view and make organizing more flexible. For example Brazilian company Semco producing industrial

pumps overlooked their way of business from highly structured, autocratic into a company of trust, freedom and democracy. The success of Semcos flexible organization arrangement has brought executives of huge companies such as IBM, Mobil and etc. to Brazil for the examination of their work process.

Co-ordinating Co-ordinating refers to adequate allocation of resources for high goal attainment. Fayol characterizes a well co-ordinated organization as a team, where all departments interact in harmony with each other, being clearly informed about their responsibilities and obligations within and outside their unit and using them as efficiently as possible. This theory depicts the picture of the whole organization as a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network running in a systematic way. The given theory must be reconsidered, as it is inapplicable in modern organizational structure. The similar theory was used by Max Weber and did not prove itself. In addition, Douglas McGregor illustrated that humanistic prospective, which has widely acknowledged nowadays because of paying attention to humans needs at the workplace, is more relevant than the views of the classical perspective followers. His theory Y emphasizes the more realistic view of guiding employees in the organizations management thinking.

Commanding Commanding aims to accomplish organizational goals with and through personnel while motivating and leading them. This function requires managers to have good interpersonal skills and encourage the employees by infusing the desire to perform at high level. Frequently commanding is referred to as directing in a dictatorial way of management. However Fayol did not view commanding as a dictatorial activity but rather as essentially putting the plan into action (Gray, 1984). As the learning organization principle states the managers must not control over people; instead they should control with their employees and lead them for higher goal attainment. This is

vital due to the fact that the managers get clear understanding of their employees attitudes which helps them to create shared culture and values within the organization and to infuse those ideas in employees mind. As Beverly Honig of Honeylight Enterprises states We all have skills and talent. What is rare is the courage to apply that talent to the unknown place where it leads, and so develop as both a manager and individual.

Controlling Controlling consists of the constant verification of plan implementation, acting according to the instructions and principles issued. It involves the process of finding the weaknesses and lacks of the plan in the way so that they can be revised and redundancies avoided. Fayol notes that, to be effective, control must be timed and supported by penalties. But it must be remarked that if the organization follows the learning organization principles penalties is not the most accurate method of dealing with employees. Moreover, some organizations emphasize the rewarding system type of management even during the failures. For instance vice-president of Computer Associates, Marc Sokol tends to reward the people who push the envelope and declares: the thing is, if you push the envelope, sometimes it rips. This highlights the importance of employees contribution into the decision-making process by providing innovative ideas, which further can be implemented for the organizations goal achievement. After careful examination of Henri Fayols elements of management which was originally termed by him as administration, it is easy to acknowledge that in todays competitive environment organizations cannot focus only on one theory of management and must search for optimal solution. As nobodys perfect Fayol is not an exception. Thus this report clearly shows that some of the Fayols elements aspects are not relevant for modern management, might contradict to each other and moreover may not be completely clarified. However it recognizes that Fayol provides a great amount of good ideas and paths which can lead to successful management if properly emphasized. In addition to that Fayol theories can be considered as one of the main sources for building effective and promising organization, but surely not the only. Hence in order to be successful, organizations must

avoid the fear of exploring best possible opportunities for their operation. More than that, they have to try various theories or even mixture of them and have the ability to adjust or revise them for the appropriate format that meets organizational needs.

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