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Introduction

Henri Fayol was born in 1841 in Istanbul, is often known as the person who developed a general theory of business administration. He was a mining engineer who worked as the managing director of a big French mining company named as Compagnie de Commentry-Fourchambeau-Decazeville for the last 30 years of his working life (1888–1918). He died in Paris in 1925.
He suggested the following 14 principles as the general principles management:

Fayol’s 14 principles derive from the circumstance that Fayol felt that management was not well defined. In his striving to change this circumstance he suggested “some generalized teaching of management” to be a main part of every curriculum at places of higher education and even beginning in “primary schools” . Fayol’s dedication to this idea is demonstrated by the fact that after retirement he went on to not just write books about management ideas, but more importantly, he found the Centre For Administrative Studies (CAS) in 1917 in Paris . The CAS mainly functioned as a centre of discussion between professionals from a large variety of professions, in order to further the knowledge and understanding of management principles.

Discussion is what Fayol had in mind, when he presented his 14 principles . In Fayol’s own words: “Are they [the principles] to have a place in the management code which is to be built up? General discussion will show”. In the following I will discuss each of his principles under the aspect of a comparison with examples, historic or modern, and in relation to other theoreticians of management, in order to examine how Fayol’s principles hold up as “management code” today.

Principle 1: Division of work

The idea of division of work, or as Adam Smith called it “division of labour”, in 1776 probably goes back to the beginning of work itself. Fayol recognizes this in considering

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