Just after the Industrial Revolution in the early 1900’s Henri Fayol, a French mining engineer and executive, developed a modern management method. He developed a general theory of business administration known as Fayolism, and by 1916 he published his book “Administration Industrielle et Générale” at about the same time as Frederick Winslow Taylor published his Principles of Scientific Management. He identified five primary functions of management and organisational activities. For Management it included: Planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling. He described the principles of management as activities that
“plan, organize, and control the operations of the basic elements of [people], materials, machines, methods, money and markets, providing direction and coordination, and giving leadership to human efforts, so as to achieve the sought objectives of the enterprise.”
He said that to Administer is the process of planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and control. Fayol continues to state that governing is different from administrating and the function is to ensure that each of these six functions are carried through.
According to the Harvard Business Review “Management” consists of controlling a group or a set of entities to accomplish a goal. “Leadership” refers to an individual’s ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward organizational success. Influence and inspiration separate leaders from managers, not power and control. Where circles of influence vs power can be distinguished. (HBR, 2021) A leader for instance like Jesus, can motivate, inspire and move hundreds of thousands of people as what he says or does resonates with them. We as Christians adopt his vision, mission and values, where a Manager is the Administrator of someone else’s Mission, Vision and Values thereby the influence is often their designation or title. The main difference is therefore that Leaders have those who willingly follow them, where a Manager has people who simply work for them. Leadership, and its principles, are part of a broader set of management activities. Effective leaders must also learn to manage, as part of a broad set of competencies.
What did early management researchers think managers/leaders do?
There has been much debate, concepts, theories and scholars who have studied and developed theories on both Leadership and Management. However, the focus since the Industrial Revolution has been on developing further insight into these roles, and the concepts have changed somewhat depending on the global climate. Key contributors since Fayol have included Peter Druckeron who explored how humans are organized across the business, government, and non profit sectors of society. (Wikipedia, 2021) He created the term “Knowledge Worker”, where some workers like doctors, engineers, scientists main asset is their knowledge. He has written over 39 books, advised countless top organisations and continues to influence theory today. By 2004, Buchanan and Huczinski developed theories that focus on Organisational Behaviour within the organisation, and pays attention to how people operate within the organisation. The Individual, Group and Organisation behaviour were the there areas of interest as each area interacts within itself and the other. Northhouse, also distinguishes several Key Leadership concepts where both leadership and management have a lot in common, as both involve influence, working with people, goal achievement however there are significant differences. In order for an individual to be successful there must be a balance between both Leadership and Management. The book also identifies a series of traits, skills, paths and types of leadership and gender/cultural difference which influence the effectiveness of a leader. Finally, a difference is highlighted between the role given and the role taken must be made, to be successful due to the many facets and nature of the title Manager “where occupying a management role as a balancing act, as a continuous process of negotiation between your own expectations and the expectations of others.”
References
Wren, D. A., Bedeian, A. G., & Breeze, J. D. (2002). The foundations of Henri Fayol’s administrative theory. Management Decision, 40(9), 906–918. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251740210441108
Three differences between managers and leaders. Harvard Business Review. (2014, August 7). Retrieved September 11, 2021, from https://hbr.org/2013/08/tests-of-a-leadership-transiti
